


A Guy Like You Should Wear A Warning

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cruise Ships, Families of Choice, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Friendship, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Mentor Nick Fury, Minor Phil Coulson/Audrey Nathan, Organized Crime, POV Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson & Nick Fury Friendship, Pre-Canon, Reference to past Phil Coulson/Felix Blake, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Undercover Missions, Undercover as Married, fine Italian menswear, terrible crimes against music, wacky spy adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-13 07:24:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 48,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12979017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: The words on his arm were crisp and clear, written in a rushed-looking scrawl like someone had taken a purple marker to Phil’s skin.So I take it that second honeymoon isn’t working out the way you’d hoped?Phil’s legs went out from under him and he sat down with a painful thud, all brain processes diverted to the task of staring at his arm and wondering—and wondering—Phil was waiting, was the thing. Not for sex—definitely not for that—but for romance, for a relationship. He knew that not every soulbond was sexual or romantic in nature, but most were, and he wanted that, wanted the kind of marriage his parents had, bound together in every possible way.And he was going to meet his soulmate on hissecond honeymoon?





	1. Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1977

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeneficialAddiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneficialAddiction/gifts).



> BeneficialAddiction, I loved your prompt and had a great time writing it... such a great time that I accidentally went a little overboard and wrote you a novella. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Now that the story authors have been revealed, I can thank the amazing Kathar for the most awesome beta - in a hurry at a very busy time - and making this story the best it could be.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil Coulson has a straight-A average, a beef with the trumpet section in marching band... and a brand-new soulmark.

  


Excerpted from _Soulmarks and You: A Guide For Young People_ , Gruber-Highland Academic Publishing, 1974

Right now, it might seem like everyone you know spends all their time thinking about soulmarks, and understandably so: many soulmarks begin to emerge during the teenage years. However, you shouldn’t put your life on hold just in case you get a soulmark! Only a little more than half the population will eventually develop a soulbond, so it doesn’t make sense to wait around for something that might or might not happen. If you have a soulmate somewhere out there, things will work out in due time. In the meantime, though, read over these questions and answers so that you can be ready, just in case.

**I don’t seem to have a soulmark. What should I do?**

First of all, don’t worry about it! There’s no way to tell if you will ever develop a soulmark, so the best thing to do is just live your life. 

**How will I know if I’m developing a soulmark?**

Soulmarks can develop at any age. As far as we have been able to discover, the mark begins to develop as the circumstances of each member of the pair’s life make it more and more likely that they will meet, and it comes through completely when that meeting is certain to happen. It is possible for the mark to disappear again if a dramatic change makes it impossible for the pair to ever meet. Historically, this most often happened to those who traveled on long voyages, or soldiers going into battle. (It is impossible to determine if an undeveloped soulmark vanished because one member of the pair has died, or if it was due to other factors. Once the mark comes through, the death of the soulmate will cause it to fade, but not vanish.)

Physically, the emerging soulmark is usually felt as an itchy or tingly sensation. The skin may grow warm to the touch, especially as the mark begins to take shape. The moment when the mark comes through, you will feel a short, sharp pain, but it will pass quickly, and you may feel happy and excited. This sensation is similar to the one you will feel when you meet your soulmate, so remember what it’s like!

Soulmarks can appear on any part of the body, though the hands, arms, chest, and back are the most common areas.

Undeveloped soulmarks begin as cloudy blobs of color that can resemble bruises. Through a mysterious process that even modern science doesn’t understand yet, nobody but you will be able to read your soulmark until you meet your soulmate! To everyone else, it will still look like a blob.

You will be able to watch the changes as your own mark develops. First, the blob starts to take shape. Then it will start to gradually darken and become more defined, until it resolves into the final soulmark. People call this process “coming through,” “fixing,” or “going clear.” The final soulmark, as you probably already know, contains the first words that your soulmate will say to you, in their own handwriting. In cases where one of the pair does not write or speak, soulmarks have been known to look like pictograms, musical notes, or other symbols; if you don’t recognize or can’t understand what your soulmark says, there are researchers who can help you!

**My soulmark came through! What do I do now?**

It’s always an exciting time when a new soulmark has just come through. You may be tempted to start planning your life around the mark, trying to make things work out so you meet your soulmate sooner. However, that’s a bad idea!

Throughout history, people have tried to force their soulmarks, and it usually just makes things worse. One young man’s soulmark read “Go, Tigers!”. He had been planning on attending a college with the mascot of a bear, and changed to his second choice school—whose team was called the Tigers—when his mark came through. He soon realized, though, that nearly everyone used his soulmark phrase as a greeting on game day. He spent many years getting repeatedly disappointed before he finally met his soulmate—at a zoo!

Soulmark words are very personal, and it’s extremely rude to ask someone what their soulmark says. Keep those conversations for your soulmate, or possibly trusted, confidential advisors like your doctor or members of the clergy. Remember, you will feel a physical sensation as your own mark becomes fixed, so don’t be taken advantage of by people who might try to learn your words and use them to get something from you.

The best way that you can prepare yourself for meeting your soulmate is by doing your best to build a successful, happy life, with a good education and a fulfilling career. If you build a life you’d be excited and proud to share, that’s the best gift you can give your soulmate! 

**My soulmark says something really common, like “hello” or “excuse me.” How will I know when I meet my soulmate?**

It can be discouraging when your soulmark is of a common greeting, but don’t lose heart! When soulmate pairs meet, their marks react; even if your soulmate is the thousandth person to say your words, when it’s the right person, you’ll know. You will feel the mark becoming fixed, and you and your partner will be able to see each others’ marks.

**Why did my soulmark change?**

In the time after your soulmark comes through, but before you meet your soulmate, you may find that your mark changes from time to time. This is because situations in your own life or your soulmate’s life have changed, so that you will meet in a different way. Many soulmates like to compare notes when they meet about what events in each others’ lives triggered the changes in their marks.

**Can I do anything to meet my soulmate sooner?**

This is a very common question, and the answer is: nobody knows! Many people have tried, but it’s impossible to tell if they ended up meeting their soulmate sooner than they would have if they had done nothing. Because of that, it’s important not to make any major life decisions on the hopes that it will bring you closer to meeting. However, there are some minor things that are probably safe to do. For example, if your soulmark is a common greeting like “hello,” you might make a habit of responding to such greetings with a colorful and distinctive greeting phrase so your soulmate will instantly recognize you as their match. Alternately, people who live in remote areas that rarely get visitors sometimes choose to move to more populated areas. If you do something similar, pay close attention to your soulmark; if it begins to fade as the move date grows nearer, that may be a sign that your move would prevent you ever meeting at all!

In any of these circumstances, though, remember that soulmarks may be misleading, because you don’t know the context in which your words will be said. Peter O’Toole famously recounts the story of his soulmate looking for years for the match to a soulmark reading “call me Ishmael,” never realizing that they would meet at the rehearsal of a dramatic adaptation of _Moby Dick_!

**My soulmark isn’t fixed yet, but I’ve been feeling really weird lately! Could it be the bond?**

Have you recently been in any crowds? Research has shown that if two soulmates who haven’t met yet are physically near each other without exchanging their words, they can develop hormone imbalances. These imbalances can make you feel more intense emotions than normal, and sometimes can even cause you to be physically clumsier than you usually are. You may find yourself crying, laughing, or getting angry at people without realizing why. You may also find yourself reacting negatively to even casual touch by people other than your soulmate. This condition has been known by many names, such as “Mark madness” or “soulmate twitches,” however, the official name for it is Near-Miss Hormone Disruption. 

If you are experiencing these kinds of symptoms and there isn’t another reason for it such as physical health or stress, consider whether you may have had a soulmate near miss. 

Some common places where near misses have been documented to occur include large lecture classes in college, theater and concert performances, sporting events, and crowded public spaces such as shopping malls. If you think you may have had a near miss, try returning to that location and places nearby—your soulmate may be closer than you know! 

**When I meet my soulmate, how do we bond?**

Soulbonds develop in two stages. The first stage begins when the pair’s soulmarks start to develop and ends when the marks become fixed—when the pair meets and exchanges their words. The second stage begins when the marks fix and lasts for an indeterminate amount of time while the connection grows. While your soulbond is maturing, you may feel unusually protective or possessive of your soulmate; this is normal and will fade once the bond is complete, which usually takes several days. If you are unable to spend large amounts of time with your soulmate after meeting, the bond may take much longer to mature, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to try to arrange things so that doesn’t happen! Don’t worry, though, once the bond is mature, you won’t have to spend every minute with your soulmate. Your mature bond will allow you to carry their presence with you, wherever you go!

                                                                                                    

  


**_April, 1977_ **

The first time Phil noticed it, he was in the shower after working on the yard all afternoon and thought it was a smudge of dirt.

The second time he noticed it, he was scuffed up and aching all over after an unfortunate incident at marching band practice (he was seriously considering swearing undying enmity against the entire trumpet section unless they started paying attention so they didn’t walk straight into the woodwinds _every damn time_ ) and thought it was a bruise.

The third time, he was doing his trig homework and scratching idly at a weird itch on his arm when he looked down and dropped his pencil in shock at the word “you,” written clear as day across his right forearm in a spiky scrawl. Almost as soon as he’d noticed it, though, the letters blurred like wet ink, smearing back into a purplish blob. When he rubbed his finger over it, it tingled. It felt weird, but kind of… friendly, he thought. Or maybe that was just his imagination.

He sat at the table watching the mark for long enough that his mom came in to check on him, snapping the kitchen light on and startling him out of his daze.

“Phil, what are you doing sitting in the—oh,” she said, moving closer. “Is that—”

He held out his arm, and she put a trembling hand to her mouth. He could see her soulmark tracing over the back of it, faded and pale since his father died, but still legible: _Excuse me, miss, do you know where the library is?_

“I have a soulmate, mom,” he said, and couldn’t hold back a wide grin at the thought.

His mom wrapped her arms around his shoulders, bending down to kiss the top of his head. “I can’t wait to meet them, baby,” she said. “They must be a very special person to be the match to somebody like you.”

_“Mom,”_ he said, feeling his face heat. “I’m not that great.”

“I beg to differ,” she said. “And I have no doubt your soulmate will agree with me someday.” She cleared her throat, giving him a last little squeeze before moving away. “I think this calls for a special dinner,” she said. 

Phil perked up. “Pancakes?” he asked, hopefully.

She smiled at him, moving to take the big mixing bowl out of the cupboard. “Pancakes it is.”

**_September, 1979_ **

Phil would have said, if you’d asked him before, that he knew perfectly well that he might not have a soulmate. That just because his parents had been soulmates, that didn’t mean that he would be the same; soulmates weren’t, as far as anyone could tell, something that ran in the family like height or a funny nose. He would have said that he was happy either way, that he just planned on trying to work hard and build a good life no matter who would end up sharing it with him.

He’d have been lying through his teeth, but he’d have said it.

The truth was, he’d always known—well. He’d always _hoped_. As a scrawny, nerdy kid stockpiling comic books, he’d imagined someone who would be for him like Bucky was for Cap, best friend and partner in adventure. In middle school, after Phil’s father had died, he’d been formless and poisonous with grief, getting more and more angry every time someone told him to keep his chin up and be a man for his mother. He’d comforted himself then with the thought that one day there’d be someone in his life who’d be there for him, just for him, who’d stay with Phil when all he wanted was to curl up in his room and sleep until he didn’t feel like there was a gaping pit underneath his ribs, who’d understand when all Phil wanted was to hit something until the pain in his hands drowned out the pain in his heart.

In high school, finally filling out a little thanks to marching band in the fall and track in the spring, he’d started dating at last. But nobody he took to the movies or danced with at school was special enough to replace his imagined soulmate in his late-night dreams, as he bit down on one hand to keep quiet while the other worked himself to furious, desperate climax.

All those daydreams and wishes seemed silly now, as he looked down at the mark on his arm, idly tracing the scraps of letters that sometimes appeared out of the swirls. He took to wearing long sleeves more often; he wasn’t ashamed of his mark, far from it, but it felt private, sensitive and tender like something to protect. He didn’t want to answer questions about it for curious classmates, didn’t want to join Bill Lindsay in his frequent speculations. (Bill was constantly talking about how he was sure his soulmate had giant knockers, to the point that Phil found himself hoping that Bill’s soulmate would be, like, a thirty-year-old guy with a face like a shoe. Of course, Bill would probably not even care; that was the whole point of soulmates.)

The fact that Phil’s mark had shown an entire word so early had made him hope it would be one of the ones that came through fast, but weeks went by, and then a month, and Phil had to admit to himself that the mark showed no signs of becoming anything other than a rather pretty swirl of purple and blue, with occasional letters surfacing like the world’s most frustrating bowl of alphabet soup.

Fine, then. It was probably just as well; there was school to get through, tests to take, a life to build. When he met his soulmate, Phil was determined to be able to give them options, to make them happy.

That didn’t stop him from starting each morning inspecting his arm for changes, thinking, _maybe today_.

Time went on, and his mark stayed fluid, and Phil started thinking seriously about the future. His dad had left him enough for college, if he was careful and worked summers, but which college? Which major? Phil wanted to do something important with his life, to make a real difference, but even as he started sending out applications and writing essays he had a hard time thinking of what kind of difference it could be. Phil was no Captain America, after all.

Phil moped his way down the makeshift rows of tables set up in the gym for Career Day. There was Mr. Stephens to talk about being a CPA (ugh), and Ms. Danforth to talk about being a lawyer (…maybe?) and doctors Ramirez (dentist) and Jones (podiatrist), and on and on, pretty much the same people who came every year. He looked down the row of military recruiters, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines… huh.

There was a new guy, all the way at the end of the row. He was over with the military people but he wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a long black leather coat, even though it was only September. He was tall and broad, with dark skin and a shaved head, and he was glaring like he wanted to murder anyone who looked like they were going to stop at his table.

He was pretty much the coolest guy Phil had ever seen; he headed straight over.

“Good morning, sir,” he said politely. Unlike the others, the man didn’t have any recruitment brochures on his table. “Who are you representing?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.”

Phil caught his breath. “SHIELD? I thought they only recruited from the military and other intelligence agencies.”

“Huh.” The man uncrossed his arms and reached out to shake Phil’s hand. “Agent Nick Fury.”

_Agent Nick Fury_. He was _definitely_ the coolest guy Phil had ever met. Possibly the coolest guy _alive._

“Phil Coulson,” Phil said, trying to make sure his voice didn’t squeak in excitement. “Sir.”

“And are you interested in SHIELD, Phil Coulson?”

“Yes, sir,” Phil said at once, then clamped his mouth shut before he could let loose the stream of babble about Captain America and Peggy Carter and the Howling Commandoes that was poised on the tip of his tongue, ready to make him look like a loser in front of Agent Fury.

Agent Fury looked like he knew exactly what Phil was thinking anyway. “Mind telling me why?”

“SHIELD really stands for something,” Phil said. “I mean, not that the Army doesn’t, but SHIELD is special. They… they protect people, it’s right there in the name. They help people who can’t help themselves, and they’re not there to fight wars or, or get political points for some guy who’ll never even know their names, they’re doing it because it’s right, you know? I mean, um, well. Of course you do. Sir. Sorry.”

“Huh,” Agent Fury said again. “Captain America fan, then?”

Phil’s face got hot. “Yeah,” he admitted. “But not just because of the super-soldier thing. Because he was a good man. It’s not just him, either. The Howling Commandoes, Agent Carter, they could have all had a safe war, nobody would have blamed them, but they saw something needed doing and they did it.” 

“I’m not sure we live up to your opinion of us,” Agent Fury said. “But I do know that the best agents I know think like you do.” He looked at Phil, piercing and thoughtful. Phil swallowed hard and tried to look mature and serious and non-loserlike.

“Do you have good grades, Phil Coulson?” Agent Fury finally asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Extracurriculars? Hobbies?”

“Marching band and track, sir. And, er. Collecting comics.”

“What instrument?”

Phil blinked. “Um. Saxophone?”

“Good,” Agent Fury said. “Trumpet players are assholes.”

“Oh man, are they ever,” Phil agreed. “They’re nice one-on-one, but in a group, forget it. If I was the direct— um, never mind.”

Agent Fury looked at him oddly. “No, go on,” he said. “If it was your decision to make, what would you do to get the trumpet section under control?”

Phil wasn’t entirely sure that Agent Fury wasn’t messing with him, but who knew what amazing secret agents were like, really? Maybe they could tell from the way you blinked your eyes what your personality was. Maybe if you scratched your ear it meant you weren’t trustworthy.

Phil’s ear immediately began to itch. He ignored it.

“The problem with the trumpets is they egg each other on,” he said slowly. “One of them starts goofing off, and the others follow. But it’s really just a couple of guys who usually start everything. If I was in charge, I’d give them something else to start—make them switch out leading section rehearsals or something, so they’d get the others to follow along with something useful for a change. And, um, I’d switch the first and second chairs. Bill is good but he doesn’t practice much, he just has a knack for it. He plays well but the others don’t have the talent to get by if they act like he does. Greg isn’t as showy but he puts in the time, and people like him. If he was the one setting the tone for the section I think things would go better.” He trailed off, unnerved by the intent way Agent Fury was watching him. “Um, but that’s just my opinion,” he added. “I’m not an expert or anything.”

“No,” Fury agreed, his voice thoughtful. “But you’ve got a good eye on you.” He pulled a card out of his pocket and started writing on it. “You going to college?”

“I plan on it, sir.” 

“Good. SHIELD Academy doesn’t cover undergrad.”

“…Sir?” Phil was hardly breathing. Could this really be happening?

“Major in something useful,” Fury continued. “Learn to question everything and solve problems. Pick a department with a lot of office politics, do some student leadership— you’ll need to be good with people.” He handed Phil the card, which had a mailing address on it. “If you need some advice, feel free to write,” he said. “But don’t come to me expecting all the work done for you, I’ll want to see how you’re thinking.”

“Yes, sir,” Phil said, clutching the card to his chest. “Thank you, sir! I—just, thank you!”

“Save your thanks,” Agent Fury said. “You may not feel the same once you realize what you’ve gotten into.” He nodded at Phil, then his stern face broke into a sly smile. “Then again,” he said, “I think you might surprise me.” He stood up and started walking away, even though Career Day lasted until lunchtime.

“Sir?” 

“See you around, Coulson,” he said, over his shoulder, then he exited the gym with a bang of the door and a swirl of his long leather coat.

Seriously. The _coolest_.

                                                                                                    

  


Phil went to the guidance counselor during study hall, and came out with brochures for all the colleges she could think of that had good programs for history, political science, international affairs, psychology, and sociology; he figured that was enough to get him started. Track notwithstanding, he didn’t really think he’d be the type SHIELD wanted for glamorous, James-Bond-esque fights on top of racing trains or whatever; he’d far more likely end up doing some kind of intelligence analysis, decoding bugged conversations from the Kremlin or something. 

He made himself a note to make sure that all the colleges on his list offered Russian as an elective.

He started spending more and more time at the library, researching and making lists, writing application essays and looking for scholarships; he harbored a secret hope that he could pay for everything himself and leave his dad’s money for his mom to use. He checked his soulmark after each envelope was sealed, hoping to see some change. There wasn’t much, but he was pretty sure that the purple blobs were taking on a more consistent shape, so that was something, anyway.

Spring came, and with it the results of his applications and essays. Phil made himself a special notebook to keep track of everything, the dates and requirements, financial aid offers and costs. He got accepted everywhere he’d applied, which was a problem; it was a lot easier to throw an expensive school into the mix when you thought you’d probably not get in.

He wrote Agent Fury a letter.

_Dear Sir_ , he wrote, then thought that sounded too impersonal and wrote _Dear Agent Fury,_ then thought that looked completely ridiculous—they weren’t pen pals from summer camp—and just wrote _Agent Fury_ , with a colon after it.

_Agent Fury:_

_I’ve decided to study history and political science, with an emphasis on international relations. I’m also planning to pursue study in foreign languages. I’ve been taking Spanish in school, but I think that I will study Russian in college. Do you think that course of study would be appropriate to prepare me for your agency?_

_I am also struggling a bit with my choice of school. Some of the schools I am considering are renowned in this field but very expensive (Georgetown, for example) and some also have good reputations but are more affordable, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Do you think that the extra costs of attending a private school will be worth it in the quality of education, or is it better to conserve resources by attending a state school?_

_Thank you very much for your time and advice._

_Sincerely,_

_Phillip J. Coulson_

Three weeks later, a thin, creased envelope with a strange stamp and no return address arrived in the mail for him.

_Coulson,_

_Good choices on the major, as long as you don’t get sucked into the Washington bullshit. It’s good to know what they’re doing, but keep a skeptical eye. Russian’s a good call, but keep up the Spanish if you can: they’ll both be useful._

_If you want to go into politics or lobbying, feel free to go learn bootlicking at Georgetown or Columbia, but SHIELD doesn’t give a damn about state schools or ivies as long as you work hard and come out with something to show for it. I’m not going to tell you how to spend your money, but if it were my decision to make I’d spring for a state school where I’d still remember what the real world looked like when I was done._

_Your grades and test scores look good. Keep it up._

_Fury_

Phil wasn’t sure whether to be creeped out by the fact that Agent Fury was apparently keeping tabs on him or flattered that he found Phil worth spying on in the first place. Either way, he found himself reading the letter over several times. He liked the way it was addressed - “Coulson,” it had started, and he’d signed himself “Fury.” Like they were equals, like they were already colleagues.

Phil sat up a little straighter and picked up his notebook.

After talking it over with his mom and sleeping on it a few days, he sent his acceptance in to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He’d be entering the rising class of 1984 as a history major; he’d work out whatever minors or double majors or certificates he needed once he’d gotten a few classes under his belt.

The next day, the mark on his arm was darker and more clear, still not readable but definitely shaped like letters. Phil decided that was a sign he was on the right track.

He sent a note to Agent Fury letting him know his decision, and got a postcard back with a picture of the London Bridge on the front and a postmark from Nicaragua. It just said “Congratulations - Fury,” but Phil kept it carefully folded up in his notebook with the other letter.

After graduation, there was another piece of grubby mail with another foreign and interesting postmark, this one a bigger envelope that the postman had folded over to make it fit into the box. When Phil opened it, it contained two mimeographed pamphlets with SHIELD’s eagle logo on the covers. They were called “Idiomatic Conversational Russian” and “Idiomatic Conversational Spanish.” The package also contained a note, written on the back of what seemed to be a form in Chinese, that said “You’ll need these as a supplement to what they teach you in class. -Fury.”

When he opened the Spanish one—he’d started working on Russian at the library but he was still struggling with the Cyrillic alphabet—he realized that the whole thing was devoted to the most colorful and filthy collection of profanity he’d ever seen, neatly arranged according to what country or region it was most used in. The text was underlined and annotated heavily with notes in the same handwriting as Fury’s letters.

Phil got a lot of really nice presents for graduation, but that one was his favorite.

Right before his first midterms, he got a postcard that said “good luck” in Russian. Somehow, Fury’s writing was recognizable even in Cyrillic letters. Phil pinned the card up on the bulletin board above his desk, to remind him of his goals when he was tempted to throw his Russian book out the window.

When Phil got on the Dean’s List his first term, he sent Fury a copy of his grades and his class schedule for the next term. 

He got a Christmas card on January 4, with the picture of a baleful-looking bird sitting on a snowy branch, glaring out at the observer in a rather unfestive way. The inside contained a single line of Russian that Phil, after some research, decided was best translated as “Great, kid, don’t get cocky.”

Phil wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was a _Star Wars_ quote, but he thought the odds were pretty good.

He got back to school after the holidays to learn he was enrolled in calculus. 

“But I’m a _history major_ ,” he said plaintively to nobody in particular, standing in the middle of the student center staring at his class list. 

Someone’s laden backpack hit him in the shoulder, and he stumbled off into a corner to look at the rest of his mail before he tried to correct his schedule. Between a flyer for the comics club and the Russian-language newsletter that he hadn’t subscribed to but still received once a month, he found another of Fury’s envelopes. This one had what looked like a muddy bootprint all across the back. Inside was a single sheet of paper. “Three terms calculus > linear algebra and differential equations > intro to cryptography,” it said.

Well, shit. Looked like Phil wouldn’t have time for that comics club after all. 

Phil’s social life, such as it was, suffered under his new study schedule, but his soulmark seemed to be thriving; it seemed like with every term it got sharper and darker, the color more vivid and the shape more obviously writing. Phil still couldn’t make out what it said, but he was confident he was on the right track. 

                                                                                                    

Sometimes, Phil thought of things he might like to say to his soulmate if he could. Things like “what does your soulmark look like?” and “how would you feel about being soulbonded to a SHIELD agent?” and “are you Russian? It would be pretty cool if you were Russian.”

(Phil might possibly sometimes have entertained himself with daydreams about how he might one day be on a mission for SHIELD and have to rescue a Russian defector and his first words would be in Russian, something cool like “don’t worry, I’m here to rescue you!” and then his person would say “oh thank God, I’ve been waiting so long for you!” and their marks would burn with recognition as Phil dashingly rescued his soulmate to a waiting helicopter. Phil’s soulmate looked different in this fantasy every time, sometimes a broad-shouldered man in a military uniform and sometimes a pale, red-lipped woman in furs, but Phil himself was always wearing a suit like James Bond, and he’d brush snow off his collar in the helicopter and make sure his soulmate wasn’t injured in their escape and then roll up his sleeve and show his mark, visible to anyone for the first time.

He knew it wasn’t going to happen, okay—none of the scraps of letters he’d seen in his mark were actually Cyrillic letters, for one thing—but a guy needed something to think about when he was contemplating a calc problem set, a Russian translation, and an essay on the geopolitical ramifications of the Monroe Doctrine, and they all had to be done _over the weekend_.)

At the end of freshman year, when he received the notification that he’d been accepted into the Russian-language immersion student housing for the next year (despite not having actually applied), he just shrugged. He needed to work on his accent anyway. Plus, maybe it would give him a chance to work on the Russian swearing from his pamphlet. (Russian apparently had an entire obscene sub-dialect built on four basic curses, and Phil was dying to find someone to practice using it with.)

Over the summer, Phil worked in Mr. Martinez’s garage, just like he had every summer since he was fifteen. He liked the work, plus it gave him a chance to polish up his Spanish, which Ricky Martinez informed him now had a hilariously Russian accent. One day, feeling oddly chatty but not really feeling like talking to anyone he knew in town, he wrote Fury a long letter about the garage, trying to capture the satisfaction of working on a problem with his hands as well as his mind. He wrote it in English, because he was on vacation, and also he didn’t know the Russian for “carburetor.” He also mentioned that he’d started running again, and that he’d gotten out of shape over the school year.

This turned out to be a mistake; the reply— this one on the back of a flyer for a community theater production of _Julius Caesar_ in Albuquerque—pointed out that SHIELD agents were expected to maintain their physical fitness, so he’d be well advised to keep up with some kind of workout schedule when school started back. Phil, miffed, wrote back, “I’m double-majoring in history and international studies, minoring in Russian, and doing this cryptography series in the math department that doesn’t fit with the requirements for any of them, when am I supposed to find the time?”

The reply came a week before Phil was due to head back to Madison, in the form of a large package with a Japanese postmark, which turned out to contain a Sony Walkman and a set of intermediate Russian language tapes.

“Master these and I’ll send the advanced ones for Christmas,” the accompanying note said. In Russian, naturally.

Phil didn’t bother asking how Fury would know if he mastered the tapes; Fury somehow always knew.

Besides, Phil had always wanted a Walkman. He blew a week’s wages buying blank cassettes and spent the weekend taping all his favorite albums to take back with him to college. He’d need something besides just Russian to listen to while he ran.

                                                                                                    

**_June, 1984_ **

“Congratulations,” Agent Fury said, stepping out from behind a hedge. 

“Thank you,” Phil said, thankful for the time he’d spent re-training his flinch reflex to a freeze reflex, courtesy of the martial arts instructor at whose studio he’d “won” a series of free classes in a contest he’d never entered. “If you’d told me you were coming sooner, I would have reserved you a ticket for the ceremony.”

“I sent an RSVP.”

“You sent a Vigenère cipher,” Phil pointed out. “In Russian.”

“Like I said.”

“The keyword was ‘motherfucker.’”

Fury smirked.

“More to the point,” Phil continued, “it got here two weeks after the deadline.”

Fury tipped his head. “Fair enough. Mail service in Sokovia’s always been for shit.”

“My mom just left,” Phil said, fighting back the urge to adjust his mortarboard. The tassel was annoying, but his mom had wanted pictures. “We’re meeting for dinner later. You could join us?”

“Thanks,” Fury said. “But I can’t stick around; I’ve got to be in Caracas by morning.”

“Oh,” Phil said. Nobody else he knew had ever actually gotten to meet Fury; Phil sometimes felt like he had a foul-mouthed, terrifying fairy godfather. “Well, I appreciate you stopping by.”

Fury nodded. “I wouldn’t have missed it,” he said, and Phil blinked in surprise, because he sounded completely sincere. “You did good, kid. I’m proud of you.” 

“I—oh,” Phil said, and swallowed hard. There was a stinging feeling behind his eyes that he was not going to give in to. “Thank you.”

Fury nodded. “You’ll get your admission packet for the SHIELD academy soon,” he said. 

“I will? I mean, isn’t there an application process?”

“What the hell do you think you’ve been doing all this time?” Fury said, which, well. He had a point. “I already took care of it.”

For a moment, Phil couldn’t think of anything to say. “I—I mean, thank you,” he managed. “I won’t let you down, sir, I promise.”

“You haven’t yet,” Fury said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next. I have a feeling you’re going to be good for us.” He straightened his shoulders, obviously preparing to go. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Phil looked at him, tall and imposing in his long leather coat, standing out among the graduates scattered across the green like… Phil didn’t even know what like. Like a secret agent in a crowd of college students. It was only the second time they’d even met, but Phil had come to depend on him, on his obnoxious demands (that pushed him to be his best), his curt and profane advice (that always pointed Phil in the right direction), his no-nonsense praise. 

“I hope you will,” he blurted, and then before his better judgement could stop him he lunged forward—Fury brought a hand half up as though to block an attack before stopping himself—and threw his arms awkwardly around Fury’s broad, leather-clad torso.

“Be careful in Caracas,” he said. The leather was hot from the sun against his cheek—or possibly Phil was blushing; that was a very distinct possibility.

Fury’s arm came up slowly, and he patted Phil’s shoulder heavily, three times. “Thanks, kid,” he said, something new and—Phil thought—pleased in his tone. “Give ‘em hell at the Academy.”

Phil pulled back, clearing his throat. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Fury grinned at him, gave him a companionable punch to the shoulder that would have knocked Phil back a step two years ago, and vanished back around the hedge.

Phil huffed a sigh, then pushed back the sides of his unzipped graduation gown and shoved his hands in his pockets. There was a rustle of paper in the left one that hadn’t been there before, and when Phil pulled out the contents he found a thick wad of twenties folded around a note.

“Have some fun this summer,” it said, not even in Russian this time. “You won’t have time once you start the Academy. I’ll be watching your career with interest. —Fury.”

Phil put it all back in his pocket. He hesitated for a minute, then unbuttoned his shirt cuff and pushed up his sleeve. In the sunshine, his mark practically gleamed; the color was almost irridescent, eggplant purple with a glaze of blue. He still couldn’t read it, but it was definitely developing; it was only, he told himself, a matter of time. 


	2. New York City, 1992

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil should have been excited his soulmark words finally came through. He would have been, if they hadn't been terrible.

  


**_September, 1992_ **

“Agent Coulson?”

Phil jerked out of the light almost-doze he had fallen into, sucking in a breath as what felt like every muscle in his body protested the sudden movement. “Yes?” 

The driver from the motor pool—Agent Michaels, he thought, or maybe it was Matthews—met his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “We’re here, sir,” he said, his voice sympathetic.

Ordinarily, a junior agent like Phil wouldn’t have warranted a ride home, but apparently there were extenuating circumstances. Phil wasn’t sure, honestly, which of his current circumstances were the extenuating ones; the last three days had started out with Phil getting thrown off a roof into a dumpster and ended with him fleeing an exploding munitions depot barely ahead of the shockwave, and that was leaving out the part where he’d limped his way back to the safehouse to find Agents Peters and Fitzgerald hovering nervously around Assistant Director Fury, who was covered with blood and had half his head swathed in field dressings but hadn’t let them call in emergency extraction until Phil got back.

Phil didn’t want to think about that too much, especially not the part where AD Fury apparently owed his life to some random Interpol agent who’d been there on an intersecting mission and had helped him bandage himself up and get back to the safehouse while Phil had been halfway across town accomplishing nothing of value.

The three flights of stairs up to Phil’s apartment had never seemed so steep. By the time he finally stumbled through the door, the smell of home—stale and a tiny bit garbage-y—might as well have been a bouquet of roses. He shucked his filthy clothes and shoved them in a bag, not sure even the cleaners that SHIELD kept on retainer could salvage them, and was about to fall headlong across his bed when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was covered with blood and ash and soot and other, unidentifiable filth, which had somehow worked its way underneath his clothes, combining with adrenaline sweat to make a disgusting sort of crust that, even this exhausted, Phil didn’t want to sleep in.

He padded into the bathroom and cranked the shower as hot as he could stand, yelping and wincing as it stung his various contusions and scrubbing himself off with his eyes more or less closed, squinting them open only enough to make sure he grabbed the right bottles at the right time.

When he emerged from the shower, he felt a bit more human, although still aching all over and practically asleep on his feet. He grabbed his towel and started drying off on autopilot, pulling a clean pair of shorts out of the dresser to sleep in. He looked down to put them on—he wasn’t at all confident in his ability to get the right legs through the right holes at the moment—and dropped the shorts to the floor, all weariness dissipating in a cold jolt as he stared down at his arm.

In place of the purplish blob he’d carried for fifteen years, there were _words._ Undeniable words, crisp and clear, written in a rushed-looking scrawl like someone had taken a purple marker to Phil’s skin.

_So I take it that second honeymoon isn’t working out the way you’d hoped?_

Phil’s legs went out from under him and he sat down with a painful thud, all brain processes diverted to the task of staring at his arm and wondering what the hell it _meant._

Lately, he’d started to worry that he would be one of those unlucky few who developed a mark early but met their soulmate very late. He’d had horrifying visions of meeting them only at the end of life, of only getting a handful of pain-clouded years together. He’d started to question his choices.

Phil was waiting, was the thing. Not for sex—definitely not for that—but for romance, for a relationship. He knew that not every soulbond was sexual or romantic in nature, but most were, and he wanted that, wanted the kind of marriage his parents had, bound together in every possible way.

And he was going to meet his soulmate on his _second honeymoon?_

Why would he possibly have a _first_ honeymoon, let alone a second, when he’d been certain since high school that he’d never even consider getting married until after he’d completed his soulbond? It wasn’t—it was wrong, it was just all wrong. Phil had always been so careful, trying his best to be certain that everyone involved in his various flings knew the score. He’d largely confined himself to other people with incomplete soulbonds, other people who were waiting too, though even that was no guarantee that things wouldn’t end badly. He’d always been scrupulous about protection—he’d never even _had_ sex without a condom, so any sort of shotgun wedding situation seemed improbable.

His mind whirled, entertaining and rejecting scenario after scenario, each one worse than the last. What if he met someone and fell in love despite himself, what if he married them and only then met his soulmate? What if he and his soulmate really weren’t going to meet for years, twenty or, or fifty years, and Phil finally gave up out of loneliness and ended up breaking someone’s heart? What if fate, or destiny, or God, or whatever put the marks on people was trying to tell Phil that he really was just the kind of man who cheated? 

His mom had left a letter for his soulmate, written shortly before she died. He hadn’t read it—he’d promised—but she’d told him it was so she could tell his soulmate how lucky they were, and how happy she was that they were a match for her son.

God, she would have been so disappointed in him.

He wished he could talk to Fury—Fury would probably swear at him in Russian and tell him something that was completely obvious, but only once Fury had said it, and then he’d, he’d tell Phil not to worry so much, he was going to give himself an ulcer ahead of schedule.

He couldn’t talk to Fury, though. Fury was unconscious in SHIELD medical, recovering from shrapnel wounds, waiting to see if he was going to lose his eye. Fury had nearly died, and Phil hadn’t even known it until someone that wasn’t even SHIELD had come to the rescue. (And what kind of a name was Hawkeye, anyway? Interpol was getting pretentious lately.)

Fury had bigger problems than Phil’s worries about his potential future love life.

Phil didn’t know how long he sat there, but finally the pull of his battered body overcame him, and he dragged himself into bed, lying on his stomach and shoving his arm under the pillow so he couldn’t keep trying to read over his mark in the dim light filtering in from the street outside. 

Marks weren’t always literal, he reminded himself desperately. They didn’t always mean what you thought they meant. And anyway, sometimes they changed. There were people you could hire, even, to try to work on that, make your mark shift if it was bad. Phil was pretty sure there were, anyway. He’d look into it in the morning, see if there was anything to be done.

Sleep clubbed him over the back of the head and dragged him into an alley, and he was too exhausted to dream. In the morning—well, in the early afternoon, after another scalding shower, some cereal and a pot of coffee—he took a long, dispassionate look at his arm and thought about it, now that he wasn’t too tired to think at all.

He was still, he concluded, freaking out. It might mean nothing, might be one of those stories that is funny later, the cautionary tales of letting your mark rule your life. It probably meant nothing.

But Phil still pulled out his laptop and got on the VPN to check SHIELD’s intranet list of security-vetted businesses and made an appointment with—heaven help him—a soulmark consultant, just to be sure.

  


**_October, 1992_ **

The lobby of the high-rise was quiet and fancy, all brass and wood fittings and marble flooring, and Phil squared his shoulders inside his jacket and tried not to feel intimidated as he scanned the directory hanging on the wall next to the elevator. Finally, he found it, on the nineteenth floor: Simon and Fredericks, Soulmark Consultants.

He took a deep breath and jabbed the call button, telling himself that the tingle he thought he felt in his arm was all his imagination. This was for the best; Phil wasn’t a cheater, and he had no intention of becoming one, not even to meet his soulmate. He couldn’t bear the thought of hurting anyone that way. He had to figure something out so that he and his soulmate could start their bond off clean, no previous entanglements or ethical dilemmas. 

And to think he’d used to pity all the people whose marks just said “hello.”

The elevator doors slid open with a subdued and elegant ding, and he spent the short ride up to the office flexing his toes inside his shoes in an effort not to fidget. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting to find behind the solid wood door, but he was somewhat deflated when it looked like a lawyer’s office, or a realtor’s, or pretty much anything else in a building like that; small lobby, a few plants, receptionist greeting him with a smile. 

“I’ve got an appointment with Ms. Fredericks,” he told her, when she asked. “Phillip Coulson?”

“Of course, Mr. Coulson, right this way,” she said, and ushered him down the hall and into a spacious office with a conversation area taking up one whole side. Phil shook hands with Ms. Fredericks, a tall blonde with a brisk, no-nonsense air, and took a seat on the couch at her invitation, feeling unsettlingly like he was about to have some sort of psychoanalysis session as she settled into a wingback chair across from him.

“So,” she said, opening her portfolio and running her finger down one of the pages. “I see from your intake paperwork that you have a clear soulmark and that the content of the mark concerns you?”

Phil nodded.

“Are you willing to share your words?” she asked. “It makes the troubleshooting process easier.”

Phil swallowed hard, his stomach lurching in revolt, but there was no reason to waste their time; she couldn’t do anything about his situation if she didn’t know the real scope of it.

“It says, ‘So I take it that second honeymoon isn’t working out the way you’d hoped?’” he said, dropping his eyes at the last moment so he wouldn’t have to watch her face when she heard it.

“I see,” she said, then was silent for long agonizing moments until he looked up, unable to stand it any longer. She smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Coulson, I’ve heard much worse,” she said. 

“Like what?” Phil asked, before he could stop himself.

“Oh, plenty,” she said. “You’d be surprised. ’I can’t believe you fucked my wife, you asshole,’ things like that. Nothing’s written in stone, even your soulmark.”

Phil let out a shaky breath. “I’m not a cheater,” he said. “I just—why would I ever get married when I know I have a soulmate waiting? I don’t understand it.”

“I’m assuming you aren’t an actor?” she asked, picking up a pen and starting to take notes. 

“Like Peter O’Toole?” Phil snorted. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m a data analyst.” It was even true, if you looked at it the right way, though Phil tended to analyze a very different sort of data from what people assumed.

“Well, I have to ask,” she said. “How long ago did the mark come through?”

“About two weeks ago,” Phil said. “I don’t know exactly when. I was in a car accident,”—which he had been, between the roof thing and the explosion—“and noticed the mark had come through when I got home from the hospital. It could have happened any time over several days.” He swallowed hard. “A… a good friend of mine was in the car as well; he was hurt worse than I was. He’s going to lose an eye, they think.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said softly.

“Yeah.” Phil sniffed, swallowing back his guilt and worry, then dragged himself back to the matter at hand. “Anyhow, since it came through under such chaotic circumstances I was hoping maybe it would shift, but it hasn’t changed at all.”

Ms. Fredericks nodded. “Have you tried anything so far to change it?”

“I told pretty much everyone I know that I wasn’t going to marry anyone until after I’d met my soulmate,” Phil said, his face heating at the memory; some of those conversations had been really awkward. “It didn’t help.”

“Have you thought of the possibility that they might not mean a literal second honeymoon?” she asked. “It’s not exactly a common expression, but I could see it being used metaphorically.” 

“Kind of a weird metaphor,” Phil said. “And I just—I don’t want to risk my soulbond on the hope that my soulmate just uses idiosyncratic slang.”

“I understand,” she said. “Well, one option to consider would of course be marriage—”

“I just told you,” Phil exclaimed, “I’m not—”

“—of _convenience,_ to another person whose soulmark also implies that they will be married when they meet their soulmate,” she finished, raising her voice a little.

“…Oh,” Phil said. “Are… are there a lot of us?”

“More than a few,” she said. “Our firm facilitates introductions among our clients for that purpose, in fact. I’ve got several clients currently who are looking for a temporary spouse for soulmark purposes.”

“Oh,” Phil said again. He’d been expecting something more along the lines of, like, mantras to repeat or some sort of visualization exercises to do. Then again, actually getting married to someone who was in the same situation as Phil was a surprisingly straightforward way of making sure he wasn’t going to turn into some kind of horrible cheating asshole. “I, ah, that sounds like a reasonable option to consider.”

She smiled. “Let me get some paperwork together,” she said. “I’ll have you sign a nondisclosure agreement to maintain everyone’s confidentiality and get you to fill out some forms, and then we’ll look at our client list and see if there’s anyone there who might have compatible needs.”

Phil nodded, then read and signed the NDA in something of a daze. He’d have to consult SHIELD HR before actually getting married, of course—there was probably some kind of background check or, like, spy prenup he’d need to take care of—but at least he knew they’d keep quiet about the whole thing. SHIELD ran on gossip, but HR was locked up as tight as the Director’s office when it came to information.

The forms Ms. Fredericks gave him were exhaustive. Phil spent more than an hour detailing his reason for wanting a spouse (“content of soulmark implies that I am married when the words are said”), his expectations regarding living arrangements (separate), legal arrangements (prenup, separate assets), gender of spouse (any), and dozens of other items, up to and including whether he would prefer a sexual relationship with his spouse during the marriage. (“While I am not celibate, I take care that any sexual partners are very clear that I do not consider myself available for a committed romantic relationship, which I would prefer to reserve for my soulmate. I would be potentially open to discussing having a sexual relationship for companionship and convenience if my temporary spouse desired it, however I would proceed with caution to avoid confusing the issue.”) When he finally finished the last page, he felt wrung out and cheap, despite the fact that he was paying a handsome chunk of his shiny new Level Three paycheck for Simon and Fredericks’ services.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Coulson,” Ms. Fredericks told him as she showed him out. “These things have a way of working out. I’ll review our files and get back to you as soon as I can with next steps.” 

As soon as she could was the next Tuesday; unfortunately, Phil was in Bogotá when she called, and didn’t get the message until the following Saturday, listening to his voicemail on speakerphone while steaming his bruises in hot water and Epsom salts.

“Good news, Mr. Coulson,” she said cheerfully, when he called her back. “I’ve got three potential spouses for you. Can I have the packets couriered to your home address?”

“I’ll come pick them up,” Phil said, because his apartment was actually SHIELD-subsidized agent housing and all of his neighbors were therefore spies or spy-adjacent. “Is tomorrow afternoon all right?”

“I’ll leave them with Corinne at the front desk,” she said. “Remember to bring a photo ID.”

He limped back to Simon and Fredericks the next day, sore all over, even his soulmark feeling fretful and achy under his skin, then shoved the thick envelope into his briefcase and picked up some consolation donuts on the way home, feeling that he’d likely need the fortification for what lay ahead. 

Four hours later, he looked up from a snowdrift of papers and scribbled notes and stretched the cramps out of his shoulders. On his arm, his words seemed to glare at him, every bit as bold as they’d ever been, crisp-edged and clear. Obviously, nothing Phil had tried so far had helped.

He picked up his phone.

“Ms. Fredericks? This is Phil Coulson. Yes, I do think so; there was one person who sounded like a good candidate. I was wondering if you could see about setting up a meeting with Audrey.”

                                                                                                    

According to her packet, Audrey Nathan was looking for a temporary spouse due to a soulmark that “implies that she has a living husband with whom she is at least occasionally seen in public.” She traveled frequently on business, sometimes for extended periods of time, and her most important requirements were that her husband be interesting to talk to, appreciative of orchestral music, willing to wear suits, and not looking for a romantic connection with anyone other than his own soulmate.

According to SHIELD’s background check (a pre-marriage requirement), she held two degrees from Julliard, had won multiple prestigious cello prizes that Phil had never heard of but seemed to impress Wikipedia, and had an unblemished record save for a string of parking tickets (all paid, mostly late) and some sort of vague involvement when she was eighteen in an incident at the Green Meadows Chamber Music Summer Youth Practicum (which seemed to be some kind of band camp) which had involved, among other more mundane items, a head injury inflicted by a double bassoon. Her witness statement, collected by the police, had been simply, “I didn’t see anything, but Chad deserved everything he got.” (Maybe if this worked out, Phil could get her to tell him the whole story.)

According to _The Village Voice_ , she was number four on the list of “The Ten Most Bangable Members of the New York Philharmonic.”

Not that it was relevant, but still.

They met for the first time in the conference room at Simon and Fredericks. Phil wore a suit—it was one of the criteria, after all—and tried not to look too obviously nervous. Audrey, when she appeared, was wearing slim dark pants and a misty green sweater that Phil was about 80% convinced was cashmere; being a cello prodigy apparently paid pretty well. They shook hands—Phil hoped his weren’t sweaty, this situation was just _so weird_ even for someone in his line of work—and took their seats at the table, Ms. Fredericks in the middle beaming at them in satisfaction.

“I’m pleased the two of you were on our lists at the same time,” she said. “Your needs were remarkably compatible. Now, you will make all the final decisions yourself, but I’d like to go over our standard prenuptial agreement templates and divorce paperwork with you both before I leave you to get to know each other.”

It was a good thing, Phil thought, that he wasn’t actually thinking about starting a romantic relationship with Audrey, because he had a feeling that spending an hour exhaustively going over the way that their hypothetical marriage would end would be enough to dampen even the most sincere suitor’s ardor. It was helpful, though, as were the various checklists and resources the company provided on making sure that your marriage of convenience could be dissolved as, well, conveniently as possible.

Audrey caught his eye over the top of a brochure entitled “JUST SAY ‘I DON’T’ to Asset Mingling!” and rolled her eyes, shaking her head a little with a wry half-smile.

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” he said, ostensibly to Ms. Fredericks but looking at Audrey, who grinned.

Once they were finally through the briefing and Ms. Fredericks left them alone to “get acquainted,” they looked at each other in silence for a long moment across the form-scattered table.

“So,” Audrey said at last.

“So,” Phil agreed. “Um. Hi?”

“Hi yourself,” she said, then stopped talking again, brow wrinkling. “Oh, this is ridiculous,” she said after a moment. “Want to go grab a coffee and pretend we’re on an awkward blind date?”

“I’m pretty sure we _are_ on an awkward blind date,” Phil said, “but yes, coffee sounds like a fantastic idea.”

They slipped out of the conference room and past the receptionist; for some reason, they both tiptoed past the desk like they were kids cutting school, trying not to get noticed as they walked past the principal’s office. When the elevator doors slid closed behind them, Phil looked over at Audrey. 

“Why did we just sneak out of there?”

She laughed, loud and bubbly, and Phil felt himself grinning back without conscious thought.

“God, I don’t know,” she said. “I think I was afraid if anyone saw us they’d give us another brochure about prenups or something.”

_“Your Temporary In-Laws And You,”_ Phil suggested.

“Oh!” Audrey cried, giggling. “I know. An etiquette brochure. Like ‘don’t marry your soulmate on the anniversary of your temporary wedding.’”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Phil said, biting back a smirk as the doors slid open. “I mean, it would make things easy to remember. Plus, that way you’d be completely guaranteed never to accidentally give your soulmate a present on the wrong anniversary.” 

“Oh god, that would be awful,” Audrey said. “It’s totally the sort of thing I’d do, too.” 

“Yeah,” Phil admitted. “Me, too. I mean, I wouldn’t mean to, but once I get a date in my head it’s hard for me to change it. I still give my best friend at work a card on the wrong day at least half the time because the first time I wrote it down I transposed two of the numbers.”

The elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and they headed in unison for the coffee shop around the corner that Phil had previously ascertained was the best in a four-block radius. Nice to know that his potential spouse had good taste in caffeine.

“Didn’t you fix it when you found out?” Audrey asked. 

“Of course,” Phil said, “but the well was poisoned. It’s either 6/7 or 7/6, and every time I look at it in my address book or start planning I have a moment of insecurity about whether this is the correct date or if it’s still wrong. To this day I can’t remember when it actually is.”

Audrey shrugged. “I mean, at least you’re trying,” she said.

“ _Very_ trying, if you listen to Victoria,” Phil said at once, filling in a teasing exchange he’d had every summer since he and Agent Hand had been on the same training rotation at Ops Academy and had bonded over their shared dislike of incompetence, meathead assholes, and gender essentialism.

Audrey grinned at him. “Well, I suppose that’s to be seen,” she said. She looked him up and down. “You certainly can wear a suit, so that’s one mark in your favor.” 

“I had lessons,” Phil said, making sure his face and voice were too deadpan to reveal whether it was true. (It was.) “I also enjoy orchestral music, though I’m pretty sure you got that in the packet already.”

She shrugged. “I’d rather hear about you from you than from a form,” she said. “Do you have a favorite piece, or are you more of a ‘put NPR on in the background’ kind of guy?”

“I like Bach,” Phil said. “The Brandenburg concertos, especially.”

“Ah, a baroque fan,” Audrey said. “Valid.”

“It’s great background music for cleaning the bathroom,” Phil told her solemnly.

She poked his arm. “Stop that, you’re not funny.” 

He held open the coffee shop door. “Aren’t I?”

“Well.” She looked up at him, tapping one finger on her chin as though in deep thought. “Maybe a _little_ funny.”

“Ouch.”

They took their place in the line. “I call them like I see them, Mr. Coulson.”

“Please,” he said, waving her in front of him. “Call me Phil.”

They didn’t go back to Simon and Fredericks that day. Instead, they talked over coffee until even Phil was feeling jittery and over-caffeinated, and then walked down to a little bistro that Audrey swore was a hidden gem and lingered over dinner, and then Audrey looked at him over a slice of cheesecake and said, “so if I invite you to escort me home and then come up for coffee, is that going to make the whole thing weird?”

“That depends,” Phil said. “Do you actually want any coffee?”

“No,” she said.

“Then no,” Phil said. “I don’t think it will make anything weird; and yes, I’d love to come up for coffee.”

“Mm,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get this to go.”

Two days later, they asked Ms. Fredericks to work them up a draft prenup. They hadn’t decided exactly how they were going to handle things—for one thing, it hadn’t been that long since Phil had gone around telling all his friends that he never intended to marry until he met his soulmate—but their situations were very well matched, and they got along well. 

Too well, Phil sometimes thought. Audrey was amazing, smart and talented and funny, beautiful and good in bed; Phil sometimes thought that if not for their marks, he could see himself with her for real. In some other universe, maybe, where things were different. He wondered what that difference might be; what possible quality was Audrey lacking, that she wasn’t Phil’s soulmate and someone else was?

Then he caught a mission to Turkmenistan and was gone for nearly a month. When he got back, he had a fractured ulna and bruised ribs, but he was sick of seeing the same five people and smelling like SHIELD Medical and eating cafeteria food, so he called Audrey up and asked if she was free for dinner.

She went pale when she saw him, and he remembered too late that his black eye wasn’t quite healed yet.

“You should see the other guy?” he said, smiling weakly.

“Oh my god, Phil, what happened?”

“Car accident in Cincinnati,” he said. He’d told her the head analyst of their Ohio office had appendicitis and they’d needed Phil to cover while she recovered. He reassured her that it looked worse than it was, and they still had a nice dinner, even if she kept looking at his face like he was the sad puppy in a Humane Society ad.

It was just as well, really, Phil thought later. He’d been starting to worry that maybe he liked Audrey too much to marry her. He could see the shape of the cautionary tale, where he ended up really falling for Audrey, where trying to prevent the thing he feared about his mark would actually make it happen. That was certainly the Greek-tragedy way for things to turn out. 

He hadn’t really thought about what it would be like to have a relationship, no matter how deliberately temporary, with someone who couldn’t know the truth about his job, about his life. He hadn’t dated a civilian since before the Academy; he didn’t really meet that many these days, for one thing, and for another… well. He’d always believed in honesty in a relationship. It wasn’t fair to expect someone to put up with sudden mysterious absences and unexplained injuries. It wouldn’t be fair to his soulmate, either, but they wouldn’t be his soulmate if they couldn’t live with his job. Possibly Phil’s soulmate would be in the business too, he thought; maybe military or one of the alphabets or even SHIELD, someone he’d be able to tell the truth to. Someone who would understand.

It was really for the best, he decided. This way, he and Audrey could get married long enough for one or both of them to find their soulmates, and then neatly do away with the legalities. He hoped they could stay friends, after.

Possibly it might be a good idea to stop sleeping together, though.

**_November, 1992_ **

Time passed, and they settled in to a new normal. They mutually agreed to take the relationship back to a non-sexual level (“this is the only time I’ve ever said this, but I like you too much to keep sleeping with you”) and gradually started introducing Phil to Audrey’s circle, since her words implied that people knew she was married. Phil was still thinking over plans for his, but was leaning toward keeping the whole thing a secret and just taking trips together periodically and calling them second honeymoons.

Fury was still convalescing. His skull had been fractured in multiple places; he hadn’t seemed that bad at the safe house, but there had been swelling and then… well. He’d had four surgeries, since. They’d had to give up on saving the sight in his eye, and there would always be scarring, but it looked like he’d make a good recovery otherwise. Phil wished he could bring Audrey to meet Fury, but he just couldn’t think of a way to make it work. Putting a previously-unmentioned friend into his fake car accident with him was a bit much for even someone as trusting as Audrey to believe.

Fury thought the whole fake-marriage plan was “a dumbass idea, Coulson, but things will work themselves out. They always do, with this soulmark shit.” (He’d said it in Russian, which had caused one of Fury’s doctors a minor scare, thinking maybe his brain was swelling again, until Phil had reassured him that he always did that.)

“So I was looking over my taxes,” Audrey told him, the next time they went to dinner. “If we get married before the end of the year, I’ll save a couple grand.”

“Huh,” Phil said. “Well, it’s as good a time as any, I suppose.”

She shook her head, grinning wryly. “What a pair of romantics,” she said. 

“I’ll buy you flowers on the day,” Phil offered.

“A true gentleman,” she replied, pulling out her planner. “How’s next week look for you?”

Phil was going to be in Santiago. “I’m going to be in Des Moines,” he said. “What about the week of the eighth?”

Audrey made a face. “I’ve got a concert in Philly,” she said. “Hmm. The nineteenth?”

Phil thought about it. “I think that will work,” he said cautiously. “I’ll have to double-check a few projects, but we can tentatively plan for then.”

“We’ll pencil in the nineteenth, then,” Audrey said. 

“Nice day for—”

“No.”

Phil blinked at her. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean ‘no Billy Idol impressions at the table’ no.”

“I wasn’t doing Billy Idol.”

“Yes, you were,” she said. “You were already starting to sneer.”

“…Okay, I might have been,” Phil said. “But come on, if you can’t do Billy Idol when you’re scheduling your wedding, when can you?”

“How about never,” Audrey suggested, but she was grinning.

Really, Phil was very lucky in his temporary wife-to-be.

“Do you ever worry about what your soulmate will think about this?” Phil asked, when they were on the phone making arrangements to go get the license. “I mean, the whole arranged marriage of convenience situation?” 

“Not really,” Audrey said. “I figure, your soulmate is supposed to be your perfect match, right? Someone is absolutely suited to you.”

“Right,” Phil said, not sure where she was going.

“Well, _I_ think the arranged marriage is a good idea,” Audrey said. “And if somebody got really upset over a decision that I thought through and decided was a good idea, they wouldn’t be my perfect match, would they? We wouldn’t be compatible in our priorities.”

“That… makes a lot of sense, actually,” Phil said.

“Who knows, maybe my soulmate is doing the same thing,” she said. “I guess I’ll find out sooner or later.” There was a pause, while Phil chewed over the idea, Audrey as always refreshingly comfortable with a small silence.

“So,” she said at last. “Feel better now?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, Audrey.”

“Anytime,” she said. “And I mean that, Phil. I expect you to stay in touch after we get divorced.”

Phil smiled. “I’d like that,” he said.

They went together to get the license Tuesday morning, then planned to do the actual ceremony over brunch and then take a long weekend away somewhere, to get the first honeymoon done so they could fit in a second one sometime in the spring. Phil was halfway back to his office when a searing pain shot through his arm, so sudden and agonizing that Phil’s first thought was _heart attack_ before he remembered _soulmark_.

Could it possibly be working already?

He didn’t dare look in public, so he called in sick and hurried home, tearing off his shirt the moment the door was safely shut behind him and looking down at his arm, which was still burning and throbbing. The colors were swirling and smearing, actively moving as he watched, until letters started to form before his eyes. It was the same writing, Phil saw, but as soon as he noticed that, the shapes became legible and—

_Don’t shoot! We’re unarmed!_

That was… not good. But… maybe it was a misunderstanding, Phil thought. Maybe they would be a, a hostage or something, and Phil would rescue them from the situation?

Even as he had the thought, the words smeared again, then shuddered into a new form.

_Don’t bother checking, he’s definitely dead._

Maybe his soulmate was a cop, or an agent of some kind? Someone he’d meet on an op?

_Stop! I’m begging you, don’t do this!_

Or maybe…

_Take one more step and it’ll be your last._

Or maybe Phil had fucked everything up beyond repair. The writing was even starting to change, messier and shakier, the colors of bruises and old blood.

_You fucker, I’ll kill you for this!_

The books were right. Everyone was right.

_Get out of here, it’s too late for me but you can still make it—_

You couldn’t outsmart destiny.

“Stop,” Phil tried to say, the word catching on his dry throat. His eyes burned. “Stop it—”

_You’re too late._

“I won’t do it!” He clutched at his arm as though he could reach through it to the person on the other side of whatever horrible thing Phil had set into motion with his plan. “I won’t marry Audrey!” 

_I’m so sorry, you deserved more time_

“I won’t marry anyone, I’m going to wait for you!”

_Oh fuck, what I have I done?_

“I promise!” Phil sobbed. “I swear!”

_No no no no no no please no—_

Phil could hardly see, could hardly think. He had done this, had taken something harmless and changed it to horror and suffering. All the faces his soulmate had worn in his imagination over the years flashed through his mind—bruised, bloody, weeping, pleading. 

What had he done? What had he _done?_

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, stroking over the burning skin. “I’m so sorry, I never meant for this to happen—”

**_Please let me die_ **

He made a sound, something wounded and terrible, and then he scrabbled in the bag he’d tossed next to the door, pulling out the marriage license. The mark burned and stabbed him but he stopped looking, he couldn’t bear it any longer; he ripped the license to shreds with trembling hands, threw the bits in the sink, and set them on fire. Then he called Audrey.

“I can’t go through with it,” he gasped, clutching his arm to his chest. “Audrey, I can’t, something terrible is going to happen if I—”

“Phil, slow down, are you—what happened?”

He tried to get control of his breath. “My mark started to change,” he said. “But not like we hoped. It’s saying all kinds of things, but all of them are terrible, I—” he broke off, trying to think through the pain. She didn’t know what he did, she couldn’t know—“Audrey, I think if we do this, either me or my soulmate is going to be dying when we meet.”

She gasped. “Oh god, Phil, that’s—that’s terrible,” she said. “Of course we won’t do it then, I’ll find someone else. That should fix it, right? That should make things go back to how they were?”

The mark twisted with pain again, and Phil pulled it away from his body to look, his throat tight. He nearly collapsed with relief; his words weren’t back, the mark still in flux, but at least that last horrible phrase was gone. “I hope so,” he said, his voice breaking. “I—look, I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay? I’ll… I’ll call.”

“Okay, Phil,” she said gently. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he said, nearly choking on the word. “Me, too.”

He stumbled into his bedroom, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and watched his mark snarl and ache for hours before the pain started to subside, the colors lightening back to the way they had been.

It was nearly five in the morning when he saw the letters finally clarify, the words that had horrified him before now like welcome friends in comparison.

_So I take it that second honeymoon isn’t working out the way you’d hoped?_

Phil ran to the bathroom and vomited, then collapsed to the tiles, sobbing like he hadn’t since his mother had died.

The next day, he cancelled his agreement with Simon and Fredericks.

He was going to need a different plan.

**_December 19, 1992_ **

Phil spent what would have been his wedding day sitting in his apartment, alternating between trying to come up with some sort of plan to both avoid being a cheating jerk and not cause some sort of unspeakable yet undefined tragedy, and staring at his mark to make sure nothing he’d thought of doing was making it change again.

Nothing had, but nothing he’d come up with had felt right, anyhow.

The phone rang, and he ignored it. He traced his fingers lightly over his mark, which was still tender and a little swollen even after several days. The writing was spiky and scrawled, but there were unexpected little flourishes here and there that Phil had grown quite fond of; a funny hook on the upper part of an h, a spiral doodle on the tail of a y, a semi-cursive m with one too many humps.

The answering machine picked up. Ugh, his voice sounded terrible recorded.

“Mr. Coulson, this is Greta Fredericks.”

He sat up straight on the sofa, fingers clutching at his arm without his permission.

“I got your message and completely understand your decision not to use our services. We will keep your file in our records for up to five years, in case you should have need of us again in future. Thank you.”

Phil snorted as the machine beeped. She made it sound so easy. What good had her suggestions done? True, he’d met Audrey—and he hoped that they could still stay friends, after this debacle—but aside from fake marriage, the only thing he’d gotten from the soulmark consultant had been the idea that maybe his soulmate just used the expression “second honeymoon” in an idiosyncratic—

Wait.

You wouldn’t call a trip a second honeymoon out of the blue, not the first time you met someone, right? Not unless you’d heard someone else calling it that first.

Phil didn’t have to depend on his soulmate using strange slang. _Not if he started it himself._

He took a deep breath, let it out. Keeping his eyes on his words, he said out loud, “I felt betrayed by the Cubs for a long time, but I think we’re having a second honeymoon now.”

Nothing happened.

“The last time I ate cream of butternut squash soup, I threw it up all over the inside of my girlfriend’s car,” he told his soulmark. “But I think winter squash and I are having a second honeymoon.”

Was he imagining things, or had the ache in his forearm eased a little?

“NBC just started showing reruns, so I’m about to have a second honeymoon with _Star Trek._ ”

His mark stayed unchanged, and he laughed into the echoing emptiness of his apartment.

“I am about to become _so weird_ ,” he told it, and his chest squeezed tight with a terrible, delicate hope.

**_December 22, 1992_ **

“Hey, Phil, feeling better? You still look a little pale.” 

“Food poisoning will do that,” Phil said. Nobody needed to know what he’d been doing—or what he’d almost done—the previous week.

“Ugh.” Jasper shuddered delicately. “I hope this teaches you a lesson about street food on missions.”

Phil shrugged to buy time as he awkwardly tried to figure out how to work in his new phrase. “I don’t know, I swear off it periodically, but we always seem to come around to a second honeymoon in the end.”

Jasper shot him a puzzled look, then shook his head. “Whatever, man,” he said. “On your guts be it.”

As soon as he was safely around the corner, Phil pushed up his sleeve and let out a relieved sigh when he saw his mark unchanging. That hadn’t been so bad, after all. 

He could do this.

**_October 31, 1995_ **

“Happy Halloween,” Phil said, handing Victoria a pumpkin spice scone on a napkin. It was a Christmas napkin, but SHIELD agents couldn’t afford to be picky.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it with a smile. She set down her coffee cup and took a nibble off the corner, then a big bite. She was too dignified to talk with her mouth full, but she made a muffled noise of happiness around her bite before she swallowed, so Phil gave this recipe bonus points.

“Coulson,” she said gravely, “that is amazing.” 

He handed her a baggie with four more scones inside, and she grinned at him.

“Seriously,” she said, flicking her magenta-streaked hair behind her shoulder as she lifted the scone for another bite. This time she licked a little cream cheese glaze off her lip when she was done. “If I weren’t a lesbian and you hadn’t—out of the blue and completely unnecessarily—told me all about how you’re saving yourself for your soulmate, I would marry you just to corner the market.”

“Maybe you should marry the scones, instead,” Phil told her, smiling. “I pretty much already married them last year, then we had a trial separation in the spring when I got into the tropical fruit ones, but I think we’ve now reconciled and are about to take a second honeymoon somewhere. Maybe go leaf-peeping.”

“You’re a strange man,” she told him.

“True, but I won’t tell you the secret ingredient in the glaze, so you have to keep me around.”

She scoffed, but drew the plate of scones a little bit closer to her side of the conference table as she flipped open the top file folder on her stack. “I’ll figure it out one of these days. So, Bridget Douglas…”

**_April 19, 1998_ **

“I cannot believe you drove that thing.” 

“Don’t talk about Lola like that,” Phil said. “She’s a classic. I just finally found an original carburetor for her.”

Melinda rolled her eyes. “You’d be better off just getting a new car. You know, one built in this decade. The way you drive, you need all the safety features you can get. Airbags. Crumple zones.”

“That was _one time,_ ” Phil said, affronted.

“You crashed into Sydney Harbor.”

“We were being chased by rhinocerous poachers!”

“You still could have turned around.”

“We were in a cargo van! Those things don’t exactly handle well.” He sighed. “Just get in, okay?”

“Fine,” she said, sitting on the admittedly cracked passenger seat like she thought it might explode at any minute. “Let’s just go.”

“You wait,” Phil said. “Once I finish restoring her, you and Lola are going to have a second honeymoon.”

“Why do you always say that? That doesn’t even make sense,” Melinda said. “How can we have a second honeymoon if we never had a first honeymoon?”

“Just wait,” Phil said airily. “It’ll happen.”

**_February 4, 2001_ **

“Hey Coulson?” 

“Go away,” Phil moaned, burrowing farther into the thin pillows. “I haven’t slept in fifty-seven hours, I’m going to have a psychotic break if you don’t shut up and let me sleep.”

“But we have to send in the—”

“Agent James, leave the man in peace.” 

Phil flapped a grateful hand vaguely in Jasper’s direction.

“But—”

“He’ll send in the reports once he gets back from the second honeymoon he’s about to take with that bed,” Jasper said. “So maybe those of us who weren’t just held hostage for the whole weekend should get started on our AARs…”

Anything else he said blurred and faded into oblivion as Phil collapsed into unconsciousness.

**_October 29, 2004_ **

“Agent Coulson, Agent May, thank you for coming.” 

“Of course, Agent Blake,” Phil said, giving Felix a bland, professional look that was guaranteed to needle him. (It had been more than fifteen years ago, but that breakup had not gone well.) “I understand you need some fresh faces for some undercover work?”

“Right,” Felix said, and clicked to his first PowerPoint slide. The room was packed, a mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces, but apparently introductions weren’t on the agenda. The screen showed a photo of a rather unimpressive-looking man; mid-twenties, white, average build with a bit of paunch. He was dressed in a puka shell necklace, trucker hat, and one of those allover tattoo-print shirts, worn open over a pink Hollister t-shirt. 

“Wow,” Melinda said.

“That’s… a look,” Phil agreed.

_“Tyler Jeffries,”_ Felix said loudly, “is a new professional poker player who went straight from a nobody to million-dollar pots in a couple of weeks. We think he’s probably an Index case, but we haven’t been able to get close enough to tell for sure. Jeffries is paranoid about people trying use him for his newfound poker wealth, and has hired private security to protect him in public.” The second slide, showing an assortment of photos of Jeffries with various burly-looking men in sunglasses and ugly track suits.

Huh, the one on the bottom right was really hot.

“There is some suspicion that the security firm is a front for organized crime, but nothing’s been proved. A lot of the employees have priors, either way.”

“Do we think Jeffries’ wins are connected with the mob? Maybe he’s not psychic, just cheating in the ordinary way,” Melinda pointed out.

“If he is, it’s the first time. He’s a nobody; made his living running three-card monte and doing low-level card sharking until a couple months ago. And we’ve never seen him making contact with any known criminals except through the security agency.” Felix shuffed his papers, pulling one to the top. “He’s actually been a lot harder to get intel on than he should have been, which is another reason we suspect he may be powered. We’ve been running audio surveillance, but he’s careful; we mainly got loud music and some indistinct mumbles. Anyhow, we’ve been watching his spending, and we finally got a break: he booked a vacation.”

“I wish I could have a vacation,” someone in the back of the room said. Phil looked around, and saw the new psychologist who’d just transferred in from the west coast. What was his name again? Garson? Andrews?

Blake glared at the interruption. “In two weeks, Jeffries is escorting his mother Jennifer—”

Phil couldn’t help it. “Jennifer Jeffries?”

“Jennifer Jeffries, yes, onto the David Hasselhoff fan cruise running between Savona, Barcelona, and Marseilles.” Felix met Phil’s eyes, triumph lurking in the corners of his expression. “We need you, Agents Coulson and May, to go undercover on the cruise, get the intel we need about his powers, and convince him to let himself be registered on the Index and give up the poker scam.”

Phil stared. 

Felix smirked.

“You are _fucking_ with me,” Melinda said, and Phil looked down at where she was staring, the cover sheet of the briefing packets.

“Not at all, Agent May,” Felix said, and really, Phil should have known this would happen eventually. “Welcome to Operation Baywatch.”


	3. Savona, Italy, 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil's undercover on the world's worst cruise, there's a persistent rumor about norovirus, and his mission partner is pissed at him. It's all par for the course for SHIELD... until it isn't.

  


**_November 7, 2004, 12:37 pm_ **

“‘It’s a cakewalk, Phil,’” Phil grumbled under his breath, tugging his unwieldy load through the port at Savona. He had somehow ended up carrying the lion’s share of the luggage: two huge wheeled suitcases with carry-ons strapped to their backs, a backpack that he was currently wearing, and a laptop bag that he had slung over one shoulder. Melinda was carrying her purse and a hot pink train case that looked like it probably contained makeup but actually contained communications equipment disguised as (and hidden under) makeup. “‘It’s like we’re sending you on a vacation, wish I could pull a mission like that.’ Assholes.”

“What was that, dear?” Melinda asked, her tone sharp as she half-turned to glare at Phil over her shoulder. He resolved privately that he would never again go on an undercover with her that required a red-eye transatlantic flight; apparently she didn’t sleep well on planes, unusual for a SHIELD agent, and she’d been weirdly snappish and tense ever since they’d met up at HQ to don their cover identities as Peter and Melanie Clark and make their way to the Newark airport. It was strange; they’d done missions under a lot less comfortable circumstances than this, and had always been perfectly fine as travel companions before. He wondered guiltily if he’d done something to piss her off and not realized it. 

“Just trying to find the right line,” he lied. Seriously, he’d gotten pulled off a potential Black Widow recruitment run for this farce of a mission, which he couldn’t help but consider an absurd use of resources. Surely getting the Widow on SHIELD’s payroll would add a lot more to the cause of justice than keeping one penny-ante card cheat from misusing his clairvoyance or short-range remote viewing or whatever the hell was going on with Jeffries. Plus, it wasn’t like there weren’t any other Level Fives who spoke Russian. Sure, most of them were either completely inexperienced at undercover or already _in_ long-term undercover, but still. If this mission was as easy as all that, they could have made something work.

“Well, pay attention, Peter,” Melinda said. “I want to get on board and get settled before the crowds hit.”

One of the suitcases had a broken wheel that only rolled one way. Phil had been cursing it—and the SHIELD outfitters, who he could only guess were trying for verisimilitude—ever since the airport in Newark the night before; by the time they found the correct ship and boarding line, he was ready to fling it contents and all into the sea. They arrived just in time to stand around waiting for nearly an hour before the ship finally started letting passengers on, and then there were tours and safety inspections; all in all, by the time they were shown to their stateroom, Phil was aching and sweaty despite the autumn chill and wanted nothing more than a hot shower, a nap, and a sandwich.

Melinda opened the door and then stopped walking, and Phil had to stutter-step to avoid walking right into her back, the suitcases rolling painfully into the backs of his legs. “What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning around her to peer into what the travel documents had described as a “luxury interior stateroom.”

For a second, her entire body was tight, the sort of coiled tension Phil was more used to associating with imminent combat than the setup phase of a mission, and then she took three long, deliberate breaths and stepped inside.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just… I’d forgotten how small these things are.”

“Ugh,” Phil agreed, looking around. “Talk about a sardine can.” A narrow corridor from the entrance was lined with a small dresser and the doors to the tiny bathroom and even tinier closet. A few steps inside, the room widened just enough to give a few inches of clearance around the sides of a queen-sized bed. The narrow hallway behind Phil suddenly seemed like a grand avenue to freedom, and he gave it a last longing look before trying to wrestle the suitcases inside so he could shut the door. As soon as it closed, they both moved, sweeping the room with the efficiency of long practice and finding nothing but dust and a lone abandoned sock that had gotten shoved behind one of the miniature nightstands.

“I’ve been in prison cells bigger than this,” he told Melinda in a low tone. “I don’t think they had satellite TV, though.”

She opened the train case and started spreading its contents out on the bed, neatly separating out their satellite phone, short-range comms, long-range comms, and surveillance equipment into little piles. “If nothing’s changed since they booked, the Jeffries entourage should be all around us,” she murmured. “We’re going to have to be careful; these walls are like damp cardboard.”

As though summoned, they heard a voice from down the hall. “This way, _signora e signori_ , just a small distance more.” 

They exchanged glances, and Phil pressed himself against their stateroom door, peering out the tiny peephole. A large group was coming down the hall, led by one of the stewards. As they drew close, Phil flashed a confirming hand signal behind his back to Melinda; it was definitely Jeffries. He and his mother, her bleached bob recognizable from the briefing, were following close behind the steward, while four large men in rust-colored tracksuits lumbered along behind, laden with luggage. One of them, Phil was guiltily pleased to note, was the hot one he’d noticed in the briefing: the other three were the ones he’d mentally nicknamed Combover, Roid Rage, and Mustache. Their briefing packet had included dossiers on all ten or so of the rotating security staff Jeffries used; he’d cross-reference later to refresh his memory.

The steward handed Jeffries and his mother each into a jacuzzi suite with a balcony, then showed the bodyguards into interior suites across the hall, on either side of the room Phil and Melinda were in; Combover and Roid Rage on the right, and Mustache and the Hot One on the left. The muffled slams of their doors were clearly audible, and then Phil was treated to two different sets of garbled Russian punctuated by the thumps and curses of two very large people trying to unpack in a 12 square meter room mostly full of furniture.

He and Melinda exchanged a look of mutual horror. They were going to have to be in character all the time; there was no telling what their neighbors would be able to hear.

They moved close and tipped their heads together, speaking as quietly as possible.

“Can you make any of that out?” Melinda asked.

“Just snatches,” Phil said. “Complaining about the flight, mostly. Apparently Combover Bodyguard got airsick.”

She shot him a narrow look, and he sighed, pulling out his laptop and booting into the secret partition to pull up the briefing materials. He found and opened the dossiers for their new neighbors, arranging them to the left and right sides of the screen to mirror their rooming arrangements, and handed her the computer.

Roid Rage (Smirnov, Pavel I.) and Combover (Kuzmenko, Dimitri A.) were bad news; they both had a string of petty crime and misdemeanor assaults on their jackets from an early age, and had escalated in severity over time. They’d recently been cellmates for several years after a robbery that had resulted the severe beating of a security guard. Lovely. 

Mustache (Petrov, Viktor B.) and the Hot One (Sokolov, Alexsei G.) were either less violent or more clever; while they showed up as associates of various criminals, Sokolov’s priors were all fairly minor property crimes and Petrov had nothing beyond involvement in a few bar fights that had gotten out of hand. They would either be the lesser threat or far the greater; hopefully time and observation would tell.

“We should unpack and get changed,” Melinda said, at a normal volume. “I don’t want to miss the lunch buffet.”

Phil made a face. “Are we sure the restaurants aren’t open yet?” Usually, he just ate whatever was available and depended on the cast-iron digestion field agents developed and SHIELD’s travel immunizations to get him through, but even he balked at cruise-ship buffets. He’d heard terrible things about their sanitation standards.

“Not until dinner,” Melinda said. She pulled a little bottle of hand sanitizer on a carabiner and tossed it at Phil’s head. “I’ll start unpacking, you go shower; you’re sweating like a horse.”

Phil gave her a wounded look, but obeyed; he really was pretty gross after twenty hours of travel.

The shower was better than stewing in his own filth, but only marginally. It refused to get hotter than lukewarm, the water pressure was anemic, and Phil couldn’t turn around without one elbow landing in the soap dish and the other getting wrapped up in the curtain. He finished as fast as he could, banging his shin painfully against the toilet as he exited the shower, and then realized he hadn’t brought any clean clothes in with him.

What the hell, Melinda had seen worse.

He squeezed back out into the main room clutching a towel around his waist and stopped flat, staring. “Oh my god,” he said. “Melin- _Melanie,_ what are you _wearing?_ ”

Melinda had changed into low-rise, boot-cut jeans and a black baby tee with David Hasselhoff’s grinning face and the words “Don’t Hassel The Hoff” picked out in diamante studs. She had traded her purse for a canvas messenger bag that was now covered in Baywatch and Knight Rider pins and patches. She was wearing _cotton candy pink lipgloss_.

“Don’t ruin this for me, _Peter,_ ” she hissed. “I’ve been looking forward to this trip all year, and I’m going to make the most of it no matter what you think!” Beneath her white eyeliner, her eyes were all steely menace, and he gulped, standing aside and pressing himself against the wall. 

“I’ll just… get out of your way,” he said.

“Lunch is at the buffet on the Encelado deck,” she said. “I’ll see you there in half an hour.”

She swept out of the room, hitting him in the gut with her messenger bag on the way out, and banged the door behind her.

Through the wall behind him, Phil heard someone make a profane comment about his own virility in Russian, followed by raucous laughter.

This was going to be a long mission.

                                                                                                    

  


**_November 7, 2004, 4:23 pm_ **

After lunch—about which the less said, the better—Phil and Melinda had walked all over the ship, familiarizing themselves with hiding places, routes of egress, places to stash contraband and/or weapons and/or corpses—the usual sort of thing. They kept up their vacationer cover, exchanging pleasantries with other passengers and planting their cover story.

“Oh, we’re on our second honeymoon!” Melinda said for the thirty-fifth time, as Phil surreptitiously noted the location of a service corridor on the Luxembourg deck. “I’ve always been a huge fan, ever since _The Young and the Restless_ , so Peter surprised me with this trip. It’s not really his thing, but I told him, just give it a chance, Peter, you’ll love it in the end!”

“I didn’t realize David Hasselhoff even had a fan cruise,” the man she was talking to said, edging farther away with the air of one desperate for escape.

“Oh, yes,” Melinda told him, subtly crowding him down the hall so that Phil could check the door lock behind her back. “David adores his fans. We’re having special events with him every day of the cruise; there’s a concert tomorrow night.”

“Wow,” the man said, shooting Phil a haunted look over Melinda’s shoulder. “Well, oops, this is me. It was nice to have met you,” he said, and darted into the closest door.

“I hope he enjoys the Teen Lounge,” Melinda said under her breath, smirking.

“You are dangerous and brilliant,” Phil replied, unable to hold back a grin. “I’m done, here; ready to move on?”

“Lead the way, dear.”

When they made it back to their cabin, the hall was quiet; either the Jeffries party were all napping or they were elsewhere on the ship. Phil and Melinda changed for dinner; there was a welcome event for the Hasselhoff cruisegoers, so they hoped to be able to establish their surveillance well enough to start making plans for the op.

When they found their seats, there were already a handful of people at the table, chatting excitedly about the weather, the ship, and David Hasselhoff. Phil scanned the remaining place cards, and his pulse quickened when he realized that two of the four bodyguards were seated at their table. 

Contact.

They took their seats, introducing themselves to their tablemates. Melinda told the second honeymoon story again; either she’d decided it was funny or she was pissed at Phil over something and channeling it into needling him about his “catchphrase,” which had always annoyed her. A retired dentist from Nebraska was on Phil’s right side; he leaned in after a few minutes to whisper into Phil’s ear.

“So, did you hear the rumors?”

“What rumors?” Phil asked. The Russians’ empty places were across the table from him, and he was trying to watch for their entrance without being too obvious about it. Of course, three-quarters of the room was currently watching the entrance for David Hasselhoff, so Phil might be a little overcautious on that point.

_“Norovirus,”_ the dentist said, grim relish in his voice. “I heard there was an outbreak on this ship with the last cruise. That’s why we were delayed leaving port, they were still trying to scrub everything down.”

“Surely not,” Phil said faintly, hideous images of spending the cruise in the tiny bathroom blooming like a cramped, unsanitary horror film in his mind.

“I guess we’ll find out.” The man took a triumphant, chomping bite of his salad, which, Phil couldn’t help noticing, wasn’t quite as cold as one might desire.

He took the hand sanitizer out of his pocket and gave himself a squirt of it, just to be on the safe side.

“Please excuse me,” a rumbly, Russian-accented voice said, and Phil looked up sharply to see Mustache Bod—Viktor Petrov lowering his bulk into the gilt chair. 

“No trouble at all, Mr.—” Phil peered across at his place card and reminded himself that Peter Clark was decidedly not fluent in Russian. “—Petroff?”

“Call me Viktor,” Petrov said, smiling as he held out a hand across the table. Phil shook, noting the callouses and the shape of the joints; Petrov was, unless Phil missed his guess, quite the bare-knuckle boxer, or at least he had been once.

“A pleasure, Victor,” Phil said, pronouncing the name like an American. “I’m Peter Clark, and this is my wife Melanie.”

“We’re here on our second honeymoon,” Melinda said sweetly, because sometimes she just would not let things go.

Petrov beamed at them from around his mustache, which was iron-gray, droopy, and enormous, giving him the general air of a melancholy walrus. “Congratulations indeed. Such a happy place to be celebrating!” He waved a vast arm around at the crowd. 

“It sure is,” Melinda said, smiling at him. “I think we may be neighbors, Mr. Petroff. Did I maybe see you in the hall, earlier? Up on the Babilonia Deck?”

“Yes, yes,” Petrov agreed. “Myself and my, eh, coworkers. We are here for a job, you see.”

“Oh?” Phil asked, feigning polite disinterest.

“Our boss, he is famous,” Petrov said, applying himself to his salad. “Famous poker player, win lots of money. So he get threats, you see? So he hire us, travel with him, keep him safe.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I tell him, I say, ‘bro, who you think gonna hurt you on cruise? They only let people with tickets on boat!’ but my Lyosha, he say hush now, Uncle Vitya, this bro gonna pay us to go on vacation, who we to say no? So we say yes.”

“Lyosha?” Melinda asked, looking around at the placecards obviously. “Who’s that? Is he here too?”

Petrov chuckled. “Ah, yes, I forget, Americans have troubles with our nicknames,” he said. “You would call him Alex, I think. My sister’s boy; Alexsei is his name.”

Phil’s attention sharpened. There was nothing in the dossiers about Petrov and Sokolov being related.

“So your nephew’s a bodyguard too?” Melinda said, sipping her wine elegantly.

“Yes, yes, he is a good boy. Works hard. Ah!” He turned toward the door, where Jeffries’ mother was walking in on Sokolov’s arm. “There he is now. Boss ask him to swap seats with Pavel today, take Boss’s mother in to dinner.” He leaned across the table toward Melinda, eyes crinkling in a conspiratorial smile. “Pavel is good security, but maybe not look so good as my Lyosha, no?”

Phil looked over. Sokolov was wearing slim-fitting trousers in a dark aubergine color—flashy and European, but he wore them well—and a silver-gray silk shirt, open at the neck to reveal a silver chain resting on a smooth, tanned chest. His long, knobbly fingers were bedecked with silver rings, and Phil could see the glint of an earring in one ear as he bent to listen to something Jennifer Jeffries was saying to him. He should have looked like the gigolo character in an old movie, but something about the easy confidence in his movements and the sharpness in his eyes made him look like a predator: sleek, subtle, and deadly.

“Peter!” 

He felt a sharp pain in his instep and turned around to face Melinda. His face flooded with heat, even as his cock twitched in his pants. What the hell was wrong with him? Sokolov was a target. Phil’d be getting sprung for Jeffries, next.

He coughed. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I was wool-gathering.”

“Is not good, bro,” Petrov told him solemnly, with perhaps a little too much knowledge in his dark eyes. “You should always pay attention to your lady.”

Phil forced one of his bland smiles onto his face. “Yes, of course,” he said, the mark of Melinda’s heel on his foot throbbing. 

“So your boss plays poker?” Phil’s dentist neighbor chimed in belatedly. “Pro? I play a little myself, you know.”

The conversation moved on to poker, and from there to the onboard casino, and Phil ate his indifferent supper and tried not to look anywhere in particular.

He didn’t do a very good job.

**_November 7, 2004, 8:32 pm_ **

After they’d managed to get all the information they could out of their tablemates, Phil and Melinda transitioned into one of the several strategies they’d planned to get out of having to move on to the casino with the others. They started flirting heavily over the dessert course, and then peeled away from the rest of the group with some strategically-visible handsiness to “go back to their room for some _private_ time,” which announcement was met with an avuncular smile from Petrov and a range of rolled eyes and/or embarrassed looks from the others.

The hallway outside their room was blessedly deserted, and they quickly checked it over for interference (finding none) before picking up their surveillance kits.

“I’ll take the Jeffries suites,” Melinda murmured into his ear. “You take the Russians.”

Phil nodded, and they slipped out the door, each with an electronic key in hand. They were a nifty little SHIELD invention, only slightly longer than a credit card; when inserted into a card lock, they’d automatically hack it open. With practice, you could learn to palm it so that if caught you could pretend to be drunk or confused and trying to enter the wrong room. Phil moved to Smirnov and Kuzmenko’s door and slipped the key in with a satisfying click. A tiny red indicator glowed, indicating that it was working, and Phil kept an eye and an ear out for anyone approaching for the entire time it took for the light to flip green, the lock clunking open.

Phil shone his tiny flashlight quickly around the room, looking for any sort of booby-trap or alarm setup, but saw nothing but a scattering of luggage and some empty beer bottles. He moved fast, placing a bug in the light fixture above the bed, one in the front corridor, one in the bathroom, and one in the receiver of the phone. They were all short-range transmitters—hence the location of Phil and Melinda’s room—that would activate based on sound and send their signal to be recorded by equipment built into the false bottoms of the rolling suitcases. It would be nice if they could have had real-time support to monitor the bugs, but you had to do what you could with what you had in these sorts of situations.

Finished, he took a quick look around to check for anything he might have disturbed, made sure he had all his gear, and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. As he slid his key into Petrov and Sokolov’s door, he worried a little that Melinda wasn’t out of Jeffries’ suite yet; of course, it was bigger, so more space to cover.

Melinda finally emerged, nodded at him across the hall, and turned to put her key into Jennifer Jeffries’ door. Phil stared at his own key, willing it to hurry; just as the light turned green and the door unlocked, they heard a door bang down the corridor and a babble of inebriated, boisterous Russian.

Shit.

They whirled around to face each other, both whipping their keys out of the locks and stowing them in their pockets, and Melinda launched herself across the narrow hall and pinned Phil up against the wall between their door and the one he’d been trying to open, wedging a knee perilously between his legs, tugging his shirt half out of his pants, and raking her hands quickly through his hair before bending to suck an excruciatingly fast hickey into the skin just below his ear. He bit back his affronted yell, managing to turn it into a fairly respectable lustful moan, and allowed his head to be thumped back against the wall while Melinda proceeded to more or less maul his bottom lip.

It was a decent strategy, he had to admit; by the time the group came around the corner, Phil was sure he looked like they’d been making out since they left dinner. He had one hand twisted in the back of Melinda’s top and the other one square on her ass, for form’s sake, and applied himself to looking and sounding like a man in the throes of passion rather than one who was counting the seconds before he could hide inside his room with an Advil and some ice for what he suspected was going to be a fat lip.

He heard a couple of graphically lewd comments in Russian and some laughter, then a whiny, weedy voice that could only be Tyler Jeffries said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, put that away till you get to your room.”

Phil opened his eyes, and met the bright, amused gaze of Hot Bodyguard—Sokolov—over Melinda’s shoulder.

Phil had never been one to stand overmuch on dignity—letting oneself be put in a humiliating situation was an excellent way to get people to dismiss you as a threat—but he felt his face flame, feeling strangely like he’d just been caught doing something horribly inappropriate instead of just moderately inappropriate, and then getting annoyed at himself for being embarrassed. Sokolov was a mark, not someone Phil needed to impress.

God, the things he did for justice.

“We’re sorry,” Melinda said, turning around and giggling while adjusting her top in a way that made it look like she was trying not to flash them while simultaneously flashing them a little. Jeffries’ eyes shot downward like they were iron filings and she had a magnet in her bra, and Phil kind of wanted to punch him, just on principle.

“You know how it is,” she continued, pushing Phil toward their own door. “It’s just such a romantic atmosphere, isn’t it?”

Phil didn’t hear what Jeffries said in reply; he pulled his key out of his other pants pocket, opened the door, and fled inside, reaching out an arm and tugging Melinda in behind him, imagining he could still feel Sokolov’s gaze heavy on his back. With any luck, they’d attribute his haste to either embarrassment or lust, but if he’d stayed in that hall a moment longer, something was going to go terribly wrong, he just knew it somehow.

Melinda slammed the door then smacked her open hands against it, making Phil flinch at the noise. “Oh, _Peter,_ ” she moaned, putting her mouth up next to the door crack. “Yes, right there!” 

Phil felt his expression twisting into what was surely a horrible look—it made his lip twinge in protest—then obligingly gave a few thumps of his own and moaned.

It was surprisingly hard to project a moan; he made a mental note to work on that the next time he had a chance to book an Accents And Ventriloquy lesson in his professional development plan.

They orchestrated a symphony of thumps and groans back into the room, setting cabinet doors rattling and making sure to bang the wall occasionally, then Melinda jumped on the bed with a high-pitched giggle. Thankfully, the beds were solid and non-squeaky; she bounced a few times to make sure they shouldn’t expect any noise, then raised an expectant eyebrow at Phil. 

“Shhhh!” he shushed, as loudly as he could. “Quiet, honey, people are trying to sleep!” 

She giggled again, getting softer as it went, then gave a couple of soft taps to the wall against the head of the bed, finally letting her hand hit and slide down as though overcome.

They were still and silent in the dark of the cabin, hardly breathing; Phil tiptoed forward and put his ear against the door. 

“She’s gonna fuck his dick right off by the end of the week,” Jeffries said, and the other men laughed. 

“I think she already has, bro,” another one said; one of the Russians, but not one Phil had heard speaking before, so it had to be either Smirnov or Sokolov. Peering out the peephole, he saw Kuzmenko leering at someone out of visual range.

“Whatever, man,” Jeffries said. “Let’s just get my stuff and then back to the casino. It’s time someone showed these bozos what a _real_ poker player can do.”

Phil stood in the dark, watching through the peephole as the group went into Jeffries’ suite, bumped around, then came back out of it. He watched them out of sight around the corner and then waited until the hall was completely silent again before letting himself sigh and make his way back to where Melinda was sitting on the bed, silently checking that the bugs were transmitting.

“Did you have to bite me?” he whispered. “Geez, Mel, I think my lip’s bleeding.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a baby,” she whispered back. “Put some ice on it or something. We’re stuck here for the night, unfortunately, so help me check these so we can get some sleep.”

Phil pulled a cold bottle of water out of the minibar and put it against his lip before pulling out his laptop to check the other set of bugs and review the sound from Jeffries’ room, which unfortunately contained nothing more enlightening than some further commentary on the likely state of Phil’s dick and a series of boasts about how Jeffries was going to “pown” the casino that night. 

Really, was it too much to ask that the man be at least a little incriminating? He couldn’t say something like “with the weird psychic powers I recently developed, I know all the cards in advance!” or something? 

Phil was possibly a little punchy. He hadn’t seen the inside of a bed for close to thirty-six hours—sleeping on a plane did not count, no matter how far the seat reclined—and his neck and lip were both unpleasantly sore.

“There’s nothing here,” he told Melinda. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

She huffed at him irritably. “Yeah, fine.” 

He changed into his sleep clothes and brushed his teeth gingerly in the dim light filtering in from under the door, and made his way toward the right side of the bed.

“That’s my side,” Melinda said from where she was stowing the suitcases again.

He sighed, and went around.

Even with everything, just being horizontal made the bed seem almost unspeakably luxurious. He was nearly asleep already by the time Melinda got in, turning her back to him and reaching out to fiddle with the clock radio on the nightstand.

“Stay on your side,” she said, and Phil mumbled an agreement as slumber dragged him down.

**_November 8, 2004, 12:48 am_ **

“Get off!”

“Hnglh?” Phil raised his head blearily. “What? Ow!”

Melinda withdrew her pointy elbow from his ribs. “No spooning.” 

“I wasn’t,” Phil protested. He could feel her answering glare even in the dark. “Sorry?” He scooted over, until he was hugging the far edge of the bed. “My bed at home is bigger.”

“Just stay on your side.”

**_2:19 am_ **

“Move _over._ ” 

“‘M not touching you!”

“I can feel you breathing. Turn around!”

**_4:51 am_ **

“Coulson, I swear to god—” Melinda hissed, right into his ear.

Phil startled awake, snorting like a spooked horse, the twin conflicting sensations of heat at his groin and sharp pain in his side jolting him into an adrenaline-hazed consciousness. “What!”

“You were making _sounds,_ ” she said, her tone promising bloody vengeance. “I don’t have to put up with this.” 

“I—what?” 

She turned on the bedside lamp and Phil winced away from the light, squinting up at her. After a moment she heaved a disgusted sigh and got up.

“I’m going for a run,” she said. “Do what you need to do to make yourself presentable and meet me at the Casta Del Sol buffet at breakfast with whatever intel you can get off the bugs.” She stomped down to the bathroom, somehow keeping her steps nearly-silent, and disappeared inside.

Phil flopped back down onto the bed, pulled his pillow over his face, and went back to sleep.

**_November 8, 2004, 7:02 am_ **

After an additional uneasy two hours, Phil forced himself to get up and check the bugs for the morning. He wasn’t happy that they only had half coverage, but maybe they’d get another chance at the other rooms once everyone was ashore in Rome that day. Jeffries hadn’t done anything but snore thus far, so he ducked into the bathroom for a quick shower, hoping it would help him shake off the feeling of impending doom that had settled over him for no readily apparent reason.

He was scratching wistfully at Peter Clark’s stubble and wishing his cover was a more fastidious groomer when the monitor light flashed. He quickly put the earphone into his ear.

“—epic,” Jeffries was saying. He heard a door closing, both through the earphone and through his cabin door. “I totally powned that guy.”

“You sure did, bro,” one of the bodyguards agreed.

Phil heard another door open and close, and then a knock. “Tyler?” he heard, coming faintly through both the bug and the door. “Open up, sweetie, it’s mom.”

“Get that, will you?” Apparently the epic poker prodigy couldn’t be bothered to go five steps to open the door for his mother.

The door opened, and Jennifer Jeffries’ voice came through the bug clearly. “Oh, good _morning,_ Alex,” she said, her voice shifting register to something more like a purr. Phil heard a muffled clapping noise and a cut-off huff of breath, and scowled toward the hallway. Cheating at cards _and_ sexual harassment; what delightful people the Jeffries were.

Phil took notes while Tyler and Jennifer bickered over their plans for the day. The ship was docking at Civitavecchia at nine to allow the passengers a day in Rome; Tyler, it seemed, wanted to go shopping, while Jennifer “just got _on_ the boat” and didn’t see why they were supposed to leave it already. Finally, they agreed to split up. Jennifer was heading to the onboard spa, while Tyler was going shopping.

“Alex will come keep me safe, won’t you, Alex?” Jennifer said, as they started making getting-up noises over the bug.

“I—”

“No, Mom,” Tyler interrupted. “I need Alex to come to town with me. No offense, but he’s the only one of you guys with any fashion sense whatsoever.”

Phil heard a grunt. “You pay the bills, bro,” one of the Russians said. “We go where you want.”

“Damn right. Okay, let’s eat and then I’ll take Alex and Dmitri with me into town, and Viktor and Pavel can stay with you and get facials or whatever.”

Phil waited until he could hear them moving down the hall, then packed up the surveillance equipment and hurried to meet Melinda. Looks like one of them was going shopping and the other was going to have a spa day.

“Dibs on the spa,” she said, as soon as he finished filling her in. She waved a chunk of melon emphatically on the end of her fork. “I don’t know what’s the matter with the beds on this ship, but I’m covered in knots.”

“I thought it was fine,” Phil started, then cleared his throat when Melinda glared at him. “Of course, I, ah, I just got back from—” a field assignment in the Amazon river basin—”camping, so I’m probably just happy to have a bed at all.”

“You should go into town,” Melinda said. “Get some new clothes, everything you brought looks like you stole it from a substitute geography teacher.”

Phil blinked, startled by the venom in her voice. “Mel? Are you okay?”

She tensed as though winding up for a fight, and then let out a long, gusty sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “There’s something—I don’t know what, but something has me on edge.”

He leaned in to speak quietly in her ear, trying to look like a besotted husband. “I trust your instincts,” he said. “If you feel something’s off, then something’s off. Let’s both be careful today, all right?”

She gave a small, shaky laugh. “Yeah, all right,” she said, and kissed the air next to his temple. “Thanks, I think I will go to the spa. I bet a massage will go a long way to helping my back.”

He smiled at her, letting his real regard warm the expression. “I hope so,” he said. “Have fun; I’ll bring you back something nice from Rome.”

Phil had hoped to strike up an acquaintance with Jeffries on the shore excursion, but the excited crowd milled and surged around like a herd of particularly annoying, photo-taking sheep, with the result that Jeffries, Sokolov, and Kuzmenko had been swept off in a private car by the time Phil managed his way off the ship, and he was forced to join the annoyingly slow-moving queue to take the bus into Rome.

Upon arrival, he made straight for the Via Condotti, telling himself that a man like Jeffries, ostentatious and flush with new cash, wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of the designer boutiques near the Spanish Steps. Fortune was with him; he’d barely gotten his bearings before he spied a familiar set of broad shoulders—Sokolov—going into the Gucci boutique.

Phil squared his shoulders and walked in, trying to walk like a man who could easily afford anything in the store but was probably too picky to buy. Jeffries’ party was looking at shoes; Phil moved over to look at belts, working his way along the display until he was close enough to overhear their conversation.

“I’m telling you, man, someone was following me!” Jeffries exclaimed, tossing a pair of €1500 boots carelessly onto an upholstered bench.

“Pah,” Kuzmenko said, rubbing at his scalp. “You see things that are not there.”

“The whole cruise goes into Rome today, bro,” Sokolov said. “Maybe everyone goes shopping.” His voice was low and a little raspy, his accent softer than Kuzmenko’s; Phil’s scalp prickled, and he rubbed his head irritably. At least the bodyguards didn’t seem inclined to make Phil’s job even more difficult.

“Eh, maybe,” Jeffries said. He picked up a pair of velvet slippers with medusa heads embroidered on them. “These are sick,” he said approvingly.

A cleared throat nearby pulled Phil’s attention back to his immediate surroundings, where a salesman was watching him as he fiddled with a wallet. _“Signore?”_

_“Mi scusi,”_ Phil murmured, putting it back. The leather was excellent quality, but it was a bit ostentatious—not to mention expensive. “I’m afraid it’s not my style.”

When he looked up, Kuzmenko was looking right at him. He nodded politely, and left the store, moving across the street to watch them in the reflection of the Prada window. 

With Jeffries already skittish, Phil decided that a more classic tail would be better than trying to make contact, and spent the day excruciatingly leapfrogging down the Via Condotti, window-shopping things he couldn’t afford. Jeffries tried on watches at Bvlgari, bought his mother pearl earrings at Cartier, and tried on shoes for an hour at Ferragamo; Phil spent the time at Armani, taking mental notes about what he’d buy when he made Level Six and had to start dressing the part. (Phil’s own suits were mostly deep discount, outlet, or thrift store finds, but he was good at picking out quality and he had a fantastic tailor who could work miracles on menswear.) Eventually, Jeffries went into Burberry—because of course he did—and Phil couldn’t resist the temptation to go into Brioni and let himself try on a suit.

The suit was charcoal gray, the wool so fine it practically gleamed, and Phil allowed himself to be talked into trying a shirt with a next-to-invisible lilac check instead of the stark white he’d first been eyeing. The salesman brought out ties, next, and Phil chose one that was a deep sapphire blue cross-woven with plum.

“Very nice, _signore,_ ” the man said, gesturing at Phil. “Here, step into the light; you can see better.” 

Phil stared at his own reflection, feeling his back straightening and his shoulders squaring. The fit was amazingly good, for a suit that hadn’t been tailored; he’d need the waist nipped a bit and the cuffs about a quarter-inch shorter, but the fit across the back was perfect, making Phil’s shoulders seem impossibly broad. The tie brought out his eyes, he thought. 

Ugh, this had been a mistake. How was Phil going to go back to his collection of off-season Nordstrom Rack Calvin Klein after this magnificence? This suit cost more than he took home in a month.

He was trying to convince himself to take it off when the door opened, the soft, classy chime announcing Jeffries, Kuzmenko, and Sokolov, the latter two laden with shopping bags.

“This place is boring,” Jeffries announced, after looking around for approximately four seconds. “Come on, let’s go to Tiffany’s.” He left again, Kuzmenko on his heels. Sokolov paused in the doorway and gave Phil a slow once-over, his eyes traveling from his socked feet to the top of his head; Phil felt the look like scalding water, and his face heated as Sokolov tilted his head, raised an eyebrow, and nodded slowly, a smirk curving his mouth. 

“Bro, come on!” Kuzmenko called.

Sokolov shrugged, sighed, and then winked at Phil before turning sharply on his heel and leaving the shop.

There was something about the Russian that itched at Phil, that told him pay attention, but even though Phil normally trusted his gut, he had no idea why it was insisting he take special notice of Alexsei Sokolov. Despite being a minor criminal and possibly employed by mobsters, he’d been completely innocuous as far as Phil could tell, not even seeming to join in with Smirnov, Kuzmenko, and Jeffries’ locker-room talk. But now, Phil wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened. Had… had Sokolov been _cruising_ him? The day after catching him in a compromising position with his wife—as far as Sokolov knew—in the hallway? Was Phil’s awareness just his subsconscious picking up on a willingness to, what, be Peter Clark’s dirty holiday secret? Surely not. The man was rooming with his _uncle_.

Or maybe Phil was overthinking the whole thing, and Sokolov just liked the suit.

“You see, _signore,_ ” the salesman said, casting a significant look toward the door. “Very nice indeed.”

Phil bought the shirt and tie.

  


**_November 8, 2004, 6:57 pm_ **

Phil made it back to the ship without much to show for his excursion besides a blister on his toe, $700 worth of fine menswear that he was going to have to reimburse SHIELD for, and a deeply confusing fascination for a Russian petty criminal who was probably tied to organized crime. Unfortunately, Melinda hadn’t gathered much more, except that Jennifer Jeffries preferred a clay mask to a fruit mask, the spa hot tub was insufficiently hot, and the masseuses on board were decidedly sub-par when compared to Cynthia and Ramon, the two massage therapists who worked out of SHIELD’s New York office and who were generally booked out weeks in advance.

“We’ve got to step this up,” Phil said, going into the bathroom to shower off and change for dinner. “It’s only a six-day cruise, and we haven’t got anything we can use yet.”

“Jeffries did say she was going to be at the concert tonight,” Melinda said. “Maybe we can make contact there.”

“Which concert?”

“The Hasselhoff concert, Peter, pay attention,” Melinda said. “Also, while you’re in there, could you _please_ clean your hair out of the drain? I swear to god, I don’t know how you managed to shed so much in just one day, but that’s just gross. Do you realize how inadequate the plumbing is on a cruise ship? By tomorrow we’ll be ankle-deep in water every time we try to shower.”

Phil looked. He didn’t think it was that bad, but he certainly didn’t want to add flooding to the rest of their troubles. “Yes, dear,” he called back, trying very hard not to sound sarcastic.

“Don’t take that tone with me, Peter Clark!”

Apparently, he hadn’t been successful.

He cleaned his hair out of the drain, feeling queasy; with the way Phil’s luck had been going lately, it was probably food poisoning. Or maybe norovirus. His hands were starting to dry out from all the sanitizing, but they said it didn’t even work on norovirus.

It was unprofessional to wish some sort of embarrassing fungal infection onto the ex-boyfriend who happened to be running your current undercover op, but, well, Phil was hardly in the running for Professional of the Year as it was.

He got dressed glumly, only to find that Melinda was wearing yet another bedazzled David Hasselhoff garment, this one a chiffon scarf that read “Hoffmania!!” in red, white, and blue rhinestones.

“Are you fucking with me?” he blurted.

“Why would you ever think that?” Melinda said. “Come on, we’re going to be late for dinner.”

**_November 8, 2004, 8:02 pm_ **

Phil had done many things for SHIELD that he wouldn’t have chosen to do of his own accord; it was just part of the job. The “Intimate Evening Concert” for “David’s biggest fans!!” that was held in the big onboard ballroom was…

It was…

Okay, so Phil had watched _Knight Rider_ just as much as any other guy in the 80s who liked robots and sports cars—that Trans Am had been _cool_ —but he’d never wanted to hear Michael Knight _sing_.

He’d really thought that more of the people on the cruise would be like Jeffries—there ironically and/or because their mothers wanted to go—but no; Phil was surrounded by a sea of middle-aged white people _losing their goddamn minds_ over a David Hasselhoff cover of “California Dreaming.”

There wasn’t even a band, he thought in despair. It was all backing tracks—honestly, it sounded like he was singing to one of those cheap karaoke collections where all the instrumentals had been replicated, badly, by a synthesizer.

At first, he tried to feign enjoyment, but he could tell that his expression was less a smile and more the kind of rictus grin you might see on a victim of strychnine poisoning, so finally decided it was entirely in character for Peter Clark to look like he hated his life and everything in it.

David Hasselhoff was wearing a gold lamé brocade jacket with black velvet lapels as he told the crowd that they were wonderful, wonderful people for joining him on this cruise. 

“As we were planning this cruise, I just said, now, this is a wonderful audience—it’s a sexy, sexy audience—a captive audience!” he said.

The audience laughed appreciatively. 

“Whoo!” Melinda yelled. Phil looked at her in horror.

“Yeah!” David Hasselhoff said. “Now we’re gonna do a sexy rock and roll set with some of my greatest hits! First off, we’re gonna fly on the wings of tenderness!” 

“The eighties were no excuse for this,” Phil said, as the synthesizer track swelled. “Ow!”

Melinda removed her elbow from his ribs. “What was that?”

Phil scooted his chair over a little. “Nothing.”

He tried to distract himself from the concert by actually doing his job; he finally spotted Jeffries’ group a few tables in front of theirs, slightly to the right. Tyler Jeffries looked bored, despite his “Don’t Hassel the Hoff” trucker hat; he had a deck of cards in his hand and was shuffling and re-shuffling them, proficient and showy like the boardwalk card sharp he’d been before his meteoric burst onto the professional poker circuit. Smirnov, Petrov, and Kuzmenko were listening with relative apparent pleasure, nodding along. Jennifer Jeffries was clapping along and either singing or mouthing the lyrics. Next to her, Sokolov had a pained half-smile on his face and appeared to be forcing himself to tap his fingers on the table to the beat. Phil found it oddly reassuring that Sokolov seemed to have some taste. He seemed fairly sensible, The Winking Incident aside, and Phil wondered idly if he might be a good candidate to befriend and try to convince to flip on his employer.

“Like a RHINESTONE COWBOY!” David Hasselhoff sang. He did a triumphant sort of whirl, stopping with his arms outspread and his back to them; the flourish revealed some sort of red satin cape that seemed to be attached to the sleeves of his jacket. Across the back, in rhinestones, it said “HOFF”.

Phil saw Sokolov flinch, then hurriedly cover it with a wide smile when Jennifer Jeffries poked his bicep and leaned close to say something into his ear. He wondered if she was eating at the company table, so to speak, or if she just wanted to be.

His jaw clenched. They had no indication that Jennifer Jeffries knew about her son’s illegal pursuits, but Phil found himself hoping they’d discover she was neck-deep. It would be extremely satisfying to watch her get arrested.

The concert went on—and on—and on. Phil drank most of a bottle of wine before reminding himself that he was on duty and forcing himself to stop. 

David Hasselhoff sang his hits of the eighties; he sang a series of covers; he sang a set of show tunes; he sang a set from his brand new Christmas album, including a version of “Feliz Navidad” that had Phil two-thirds convinced that David Hasselhoff personally hated José Feliciano, Christmas, the Spanish language, and every individual in the room.

“Country roooooooooads,” several hundred drunk cruisegoers sang along with David Hasselhoff, “take me hoooooooooooooooooome, to a plaaaaaace I belooooooooooong!”

Phil buried his face in his hands. He could feel his soul withering.

David Hasselhoff did a big medley number which somehow started off as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and then morphed into “Coming to America” and Neil Diamond’s “America” before going back to “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” during which he changed into a leather jacket covered with multicolored flashing LEDs. He left the stage during the applause, and Phil began to hope that his long nightmare was over, when David Hasselhoff came back out, in yet another ostentatious jacket, for an encore.

“I sang this song,” he said, “on a crane—”

The audience started whooping.

“—in front of the Berlin Wall—”

“Yeah!” Melinda yelled.

“—in 1989! Now, and then, we are _all_ —”

“Looking for Freedom!” the crowd shouted along with David Hasselhoff, leaping to their feet in ecstasy.

Apparently, Phil remembered from the briefing packet, this was his biggest hit.

Melinda grabbed his wrist. “Dance with me, Peter!” 

Phil shot her a betrayed look, but she tightened her grip warningly as she started to bop around to the synthesized beat. Phil looked around; he didn’t see any sort of apparent threat to their cover, but… well. When your mission partner needed something from you, you did everything you could. He shuffled from side to side amid the chairs and concertgoers, concentrating on moving more or less on beat without actually paying too much attention to the music itself. 

“You can do better than that, bro!” a Russian-accented voice bellowed over the noise, and Phil blinked as Melinda pirouetted out of his arms and into what was really quite a credible box step with Viktor Petrov.

Phil was pretty sure that this was some sort of punishment for something he had done, or would someday do. Only the repayment of a heavy karmic debt could make this make sense.

The crowd jostled and heaved, dancing and singing; it would have been a nice scene if the music wasn’t so terrible. Phil kept dancing, trying to keep an eye on Melinda while still being positioned to move quickly if he had to, but the noise and jostling—not to mention the wine—had his situational awareness shot to shit. He stepped back to avoid an elderly couple, and ran straight into a warm, broad back with a thump that made them both stagger.

He turned around, apologies rising to his lips, then inhaled sharply as he met the wide, startled eyes of Alexsei Sokolov from just a few inches away. They were really quite lovely up close, Phil thought irrelevantly, a mix of colors like a Chagall window. They stared at each other for a moment; Sokolov’s mouth quirked in a warm, friendly little grin. He leaned in toward Phil’s ear, a hand rising to rest on Phil’s forearm, and Phil held his breath for no reason at all he could decipher— 

The song ended in an orgy of screaming applause and Jennifer Jeffries materialized, grabbing Sokolov’s arm and pulling him away.

He followed her, shooting one quick glance and an apologetic shrug back over his shoulder, and left Phil standing stock still, an island in the sea of David Hasselhoff fans, a sinking in his chest like everything had just gone horribly wrong.

He shook off his daze and went to find Melinda in the crowd.

                                                                                                    

  


**_November 9, 2004, 12:49 am_ **

As they walked back to their cabin, Melinda kept humming bits of David Hasselhoff songs, out of order and slightly off-key, just loud enough to be at the edge of Phil’s hearing. By the time they got back to their cabin, Phil had a splitting headache and felt like his spine had been replaced with rocks. All he wanted was darkness and silence, but Melinda was apparently punishing him for something, turning on the little television as soon as they shut the door behind them. 

“Do we have to do that?” he asked, trying not to clench his teeth.

“I want to hear the weather,” she said. She moved to the tiny dresser and opened one of her drawers, turning garments over like she was considering what to wear. Phil’s drawer was on the other side of her. 

He stood waiting for a minute. She didn’t move.

“Excuse me,” he said flatly.

She huffed, but moved about an inch closer to the dresser. He squeezed past, and something about the feeling of their backs pressing together put his teeth on edge. 

The room had gotten stuffy while they were gone; Phil wished they had a window to open or something.

He grabbed some shorts and a tank top out of his drawer and squeezed past Melinda again, heading to the bathroom.

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, squinting his eyes shut against the light and reaching up to massage his temples. He wondered if it was possible to suddenly develop migraines. Or possibly a brain tumor. Maybe his estate could sue David Hasselhoff—or Blake; this was all his fault, after all. He scrambled in his shaving kit and dry-swallowed four ibuprofen.

Phil’s clothes were clammy from sweat and sea spray, and he realized he felt completely disgusting. He peeled out of his clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and took himself into the shower, where he scrubbed himself until the little bar of complimentary soap was worn to a sliver and then stood under the spray until the water went cold.

Shivering but clean, he pulled on his sleep clothes, brushed his teeth, exchanged his contacts for his glasses, and went back out into the cabin.

Melinda was standing in front of the bathroom door, back rigid, arms crossed, and actually, literally tapping her foot.

“What?” he demanded sharply, then winced as the sound of his own voice lanced through his temple like an icepick.

“I suppose you’ve used all the hot water.”

“What hot water?” Phil said bitterly. “For the price they’re charging you’d think you could get a hot shower, but no, apparently that’s out of reach in this ‘fairy tale castle at sea’.”

“I might have wanted to shower too, you know,” Melinda continued.

“Well, then you should have told me that,” Phil said. He could feel his back and shoulders coiling up again; he felt ridiculously trapped in the narrow space. “Do what you have to, I’m going to bed.” He elbowed past her, holding back a shudder at the feel of her sequined sleeve against his bare arm, and threw back the covers, barely stopping to put his glasses on the bedside table before burrowing into the bed face-down and trying to make himself breathe.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In…

The light snapped on and Phil snorted and flailed, tangling himself in the sheets. “What is it!”

“You had your _feet_ on my _leg._ ”

He took quick stock. “I’m nowhere near your leg!”

“That’s because I moved. God, I don’t know how I even put up with you, you’re like a, an octopus or something, and the _snoring_ —”

“Hey!” Phil dragged himself upright, pulling on his glasses. He regretted it as soon as he looked over into Melinda’s stony expression. “I don’t snore.”

“You do. It’s like trying to sleep with a faulty diesel engine.”

“I—”

“You are keeping me awake, Ph—Peter.”

“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose! God, what is wrong with you lately? I’m trying to make allowances but ever since we left you’ve been—” he cut himself off, not awake enough to think of a non-offensive comparison.

“What?” Melinda snapped, her voice rising. “A harpy? A gorgon? A _bitch?_ ”

“Don’t put words in my mouth!” Phil cried, stung. He would never—surely Melinda knew he would _never_ —

“Oh, don’t even start, Peter! God, you’re so infuriating! Sometimes I wonder what we’re even _doing_ here!” Her voice rang out, Melinda’s take-no-prisoners voice, and Phil winced, remembering where they were.

“Shh!” he said, desperately. 

“Don’t you _shush_ me, you condescending jackass!”

“The neighbors will hear us, _Melanie!_ ”

She sucked in a little breath, then set her chin. “Well let them listen, then!” she said, raising her voice. “Let them all hear that I have _had it_ with your conceited bullshit! Get out!”

“Mel—”

“Get _out!_ ” There was a dangerous light in her eyes, and Phil scrambled out of bed, letting himself be crowded back toward the door. This was wrong, this—Melinda wasn’t like this, _Phil_ wasn’t like this, something was wrong with them. Had they been poisoned, or—what was—

Melinda reached past him, flung open the cabin door, and pushed him out; the sheer surprise of it caught him off-guard and he stumbled, arms pinwheeling, hitting the opposite wall and sliding down into a graceless heap.

“And you can sleep in the hall for all I care!” Melinda cried, and slammed the cabin door shut.

_“Bro,”_ someone said softly, and Phil looked up in horror to see the doors to either side of their cabin standing open, and the four Russians staring down at him where he sat on the thin carpet.

The door opened again, and Phil got hit in the face with a pillow, knocking his glasses askew. 

The door slammed closed.

Smirnov snorted and made a disparaging comment in Russian about Phil’s manhood, which made Kuzmenko laugh uproariously before jabbing his companion in the ribs and waving his beer bottle toward the inside of the cabin. They vanished inside, and Phil looked down at his bare knees, pale and knobbly in the sickly hall light, hoping against hope that the other two would go back to bed as well and leave him to die of humiliation in peace.

“So,” Sokolov said, and Phil’s head flew up in surprise; Sokolov’s voice was twisting oddly through his accent, tight and tense, though his expression was almost aggressively neutral. “I take it that second honeymoon isn’t working out the way you’d hoped?”

There was a split-second where the world went still, and Phil had just enough time to wonder if this was some bizarre coincidence when he felt it begin.

Phil’s arm burned, and he made a soft, wavering noise as the letters traced themselves with blazing heat, fixed into his flesh forever. He dropped his eyes again, afraid to see Sokolov’s expression. There would be no hiding what had happened; Phil’s arm was bare, the words exposed to the world.

Phil almost laughed, remembering how he’d thought that maybe his soulmate would be another agent, someone Phil wouldn’t have to lie to about his line of work. Somehow, it had never occured to him that his soulmate might actually be someone on the other side—might be a target in an active op—might be—

He heard Sokolov gasp, a tiny, wounded sound, and looked up to see him stagger backwards a step, fetching up against the doorframe with a thud. His face was broken open somehow, vulnerable; Phil wanted to protect him, he wanted to get up off the floor and shove Petrov’s hand off his shoulder, he wanted to bury his face against that broad chest, he… he wanted… 

He wanted to go to his stash in Sicily and clean it out of cash and guns and false papers and take his soulmate and run, somewhere SHIELD would never find them, somewhere the Russians would never find them, somewhere they could be safe together—

He was _so fucked._


	4. The Middle of the Mediterranean Sea, 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil's met his soulmate at last, and he's GORGEOUS. Too bad he's probably a Russian mobster.

  


**_November 9, 2004, 12:53 am_ **

Phil felt his breath speeding up, something very like panic rising in his chest as he looked up into the beautiful eyes of Alexsei Sokolov: petty criminal, probable mobster, definite person of interest in Phil’s current mission, and, apparently, the soulmate Phil had been waiting to meet since 1977. 

“Lyosha, požalujsta, bud’ ostorožen,” Petrov said, shaking Sokolov’s shoulder a little. _Lyosha, please be careful._

He broke eye contact with Phil and turned to his uncle, a wry smile flickering on his face before vanishing again. “Bud’ ostorožen Ja vsegda ostorožen, Vitya,” he said quietly. _I’m always careful, Vitya._

Petrov shook his head, looking worried. “Postarajsja, čtoby on tebja ne podverg opasnosti.” He made an expressive gesture, indicating Phil, the pillow Melinda had beaned him with, and the closed cabin door. _Just don’t let him put you in danger._

Sokolov snorted, throwing off his uncle’s arm and turning back toward Phil, moving closer and crouching down next to him. “On ne sdelaet ètogo,” he tossed over his shoulder. _He won’t do that._ He met Phil’s eyes again, cocking his head a little. “Okay?” he asked.

_“_ Eŝe čego ne hvatalo _,”_ Phil said unthinkingly, dropping his head back against the wall with a thump. _I need this like I need a hole in the head._

Sokolov drew in a sharp breath, and Phil’s stomach lurched in horror when he realized what he’d just done; his thoughtless words were Sokolov’s _soulmark_ , he’d been wearing them this whole time and thinking—and thinking—

Fuck, what must he have thought? 

Phil looked back up, helpless to keep looking away. Sokolov’s hand was pressed against his heart; he’d gone pale and was biting his lip, his chest heaving as he stared at Phil like—

Phil didn’t know what like. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before.

“Ty govorîsh’ po-russki,” Sokolov said, as though he were having trouble believing it; his voice was just above a whisper. _You speak Russian._

“Da,” Phil said, feeling himself start to tremble as the truth sunk in. This was it; this was really happening, right there in the hall of the cruise ship. _Yes._

Sokolov suddenly stood up and pulled off the tracksuit jacket he was wearing, dropping it on the ground and tearing his henley off over his head to stare down at his chest. Neatly centered over his heart, Phil could see his own writing, crisp-edged midnight blue: **Еще чего не хватало**.

He should be reacting somehow, he thought. He’d imagined this scene so many times, he should be saying something, doing something, but all he could do was stare.

They might have stayed there all night, caught in a loop of shock, but Petrov had different ideas.

“Lyosha,” he said softly, then, gentle and coaxing, “Lyoshenka.”

Sokolov—no, Phil couldn’t keep calling him that, like he was just another mark, like he was nobody, not when he was everything. _Lyosha_ looked over at Petrov. “Djadja Vitya?”

Petrov picked up Lyosha’s jacket and draped it over his shoulders, then bent close and whispered something in his ear, ruffling his hair affectionately as he pulled away.

“I think you need to find some place to talk,” he said sternly, looking at Phil. “You be good to my Lyosha, bro.”

Phil nodded, dumbly, unable to look away as his soulmate—his _soulmate,_ after all this time—pulled his shirt back on, covering up a wide expanse of sleek muscle and golden skin. Lyosha looked up, met his eyes, and blushed adorably, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he seemed to realize that Phil was still sitting on the floor, and reached out a hand to help him up.

They both gasped as their hands met; Phil could feel all the hair on his body standing up, his skin prickling with a wave of static electricity that washed over him then transmuted to a warm, comforting glow where their skin touched. Phil just sat there, staring, until Petrov cleared his throat and Lyosha tugged Phil quickly to his feet. His hand was warm and rough, all knobbly knuckles and strange callouses Phil didn’t recognize, and Phil found himself twining their fingers together without thinking, something wire-tense and snarling in his chest settling at the touch. He felt safe; what he was doing, the things he wanted to do, were all high-risk, could all end in disaster. Phil knew it, intellectually, but he couldn’t make his heart or his gut believe it would happen, the hormone surge of a maturing soulbond singing in his veins of belonging and contentment and home.

Lyosha squeezed his hand, smiling a little. They were much of a height; from so close, Phil could see the fine tracery of laugh lines, just beginning to show at the corners of his blue-green eyes. Phil wanted to reach up, to touch the golden stubble on his cheek, to see if his lips were as soft as they looked. 

_Please_ , Phil thought desperately. _Please let him be a good person. Because I don’t think I’m going to be strong enough to give him up, if he isn’t, and what kind of life would that be?_

Phil scooped his pillow up from the floor, then they fell into step without exchanging another word, heading out toward the long row of deck chairs overlooking the outdoor pool. At that time of night, in the chilly November air, it was completely deserted. 

They found a chaise that was tucked out of the wind, and Phil reluctantly let go of Lyosha’s hand to sit, tucking his cold legs as far underneath himself as he could and arranging the pillow over his lap to help keep out some of the chill. Lyosha frowned, and shrugged out of his track jacket, holding it out to Phil.

“Is cold,” he said gruffly, eyes flicking over Phil’s bare shoulders, then noticably trailing down his arm to rest on Phil’s soulmark. 

Phil shivered, as much from the weight of his gaze as from the temperature. “All right,” he said quietly, shrugging into the jacket. It was skin-warm and smelled faintly of some kind of cologne; Phil inhaled deeply, giving in to the temptation to nestle into it a little as he zipped it up. Lyosha reached out, smiling softly, and turned up the collar, settling it carefully to shield the back of Phil’s neck. 

Phil’s chest ached at the gesture, a simple kind of caretaking he hadn’t received—hadn’t needed, hadn’t thought he’d want—since long before he’d joined SHIELD. There was something thrilling and intimate about it, the satin lining of the jacket slipping over Phil’s bare arms, giving Phil the heat of Lyosha’s body.

“Sit with me,” Phil said on impulse. Lyosha looked startled for a moment and then grinned widely, his eyes crinkling with joy as he settled next to Phil on the chaise, sitting so close Phil could almost feel him, but not quite touching.

Phil wasn’t the biggest fan of that part. They hadn’t touched much yet, but it had been enough to convince him that they _ought_ to be touching, all the time.

Distantly, he knew that he wasn’t thinking entirely clearly, that the powerful surge of hormones and neurotransmitters triggered by the forming soulbond was making him feel clingy and needy and trusting and protective. He didn’t care, though. Lyosha would be feeling the same things—was, if the jacket and the way he kept shooting wistful little looks at Phil’s hands were any indication.

Phil laid his hand out on his knee, inviting, and Lyosha picked it up at once, holding it between both of his and half-lifting it to his face before putting it back down, shooting a sheepish-looking glance at Phil, who patting his knee reassuringly. He didn’t know what exactly Lyosha had stopped himself from doing—kissing Phil’s hand, maybe—but he found himself wishing that Lyosha hadn’t stopped, even though it was probably for the best that they keep their physical contact somewhat limited until they had a chance to talk.

SHIELD’s SOP on what to do if you met your soulmate on a mission was unambiguous and simple; hand the mission over to someone else, isolate yourself with your soulmate in the most secure location you could find, and indulge the forming soulbond with as much contact as possible in order to complete the bonding period as quickly as you could. Contrary to what some thought, this policy wasn’t entirely driven by a desire to get agents back to work; an agent with a maturing soulbond was both dangerous and vulnerable. It wasn’t widely known, but the SSR had discovered a cache of horrific research performed by Hydra during World War II; they had been trying to use soulbonds to force obedience and loyalty. The brainwashing hadn’t succeeded, but the program had an astronomical casualty level, murders and suicides and permanent brain damage. A completed bond gave you mental flexibility, was protective against any number of traumas and health conditions, but the price for that protection could be steep. There was a strong taboo against bond interference, naturally, but most of the enemies of SHIELD weren’t especially concerned by the possibility of a war crimes tribunal. Phil needed to get Lyosha someplace safe, but how could he explain why it was so important? Most civilians didn’t go into seclusion to bond any longer, the practice considered hopelessly old-fashioned.

Given the powerful drive toward honesty and intimacy that the bond produces, any soulmate of a SHIELD agent had to have the same clearance level as the agent. This was the primary reason Phil hadn’t been promoted to Level Six yet; as a matter of security, agents with an immature soulbond had clearance caps until SHIELD could vet their eventual partner. Phil wanted to tell Lyosha everything, but—he and his uncle were both working for Jeffries. It could just be a job, but what if Phil was wrong? He could blow the op; he could get them all killed. If Lyosha turned out to really be a mobster, not an innocent bystander accidentally employed by mobsters, this might be Phil’s last mission.

Then he remembered what Audrey had said, just before their disastrous attempt at cheating fate. “If somebody got really upset over a decision that I thought through and decided was a good idea, they wouldn’t be my perfect match, would they?”

Phil believed in SHIELD, right down to his bones. If Lyosha would betray SHIELD—if Lyosha would betray _Phil_ —then he wouldn’t be Phil’s perfect match, would he?

There was only one real course of action, here. Phil was just going to have to trust Lyosha with the truth. If he was really innocent—or even if he wasn’t, but was willing to turn on the others—then he could help them finish the mission, maybe even give them intel so they could get off this godforsaken cruise and start figuring out what their future would be.

And if he wasn’t willing—if things went wrong—well, there was always Sicily.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.

He felt a brief touch on his bare knee, just a brush of warmth hastily moved away, and looked up. Lyosha was watching him, eyes wide, a look on his face that made Phil’s throat tighten, a look Phil thought might be fear.

“Anything,” he said, and Phil startled; Lyosha’s accent was completely gone, replaced with a slight Midwestern drawl. “But first, I— I’ve been—oh, fuck it. I’m not Russian,” he blurted. He leaned closer, lowered his voice further, his face gone shuttered, the kind of expressionless that you only saw on someone who didn’t dare risk any expression at all. “I’m actually a Fed. Special Agent Clint Barton, FBI. I’m undercover.” The mask broke a little, a crease appearing between his brows. “Um, I can tell you’re kind of freaking out and I know it didn’t look good, with the, the tracksuit bros and that doucheclown Tyler and all, but hopefully law enforcement is at least a little better than mob enforcement?”

Phil stared at him, feeling completely unmoored, then barked out a long, graceless laugh, collapsing forward into Lyosha’s—into _Clint’s_ —solid chest, shaking with uncontrollable laughter that Phil distantly noticed was more than a little hysterical.

“Um?” Clint patted Phil’s back gingerly through his jacket. His hands felt so good, even through the layers. “Peter? Are you okay? I know this must be a surpri—”

“Phil,” Phil interrupted him, sitting up enough to look him in the face. “My name’s Phil Coulson.” He sucked in a breath, his gut aching from laughter, lightheaded and dizzy with relief. “Agent Phil Coulson, of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. And I’m not married, and I live in New York, not Palm Springs. I’m undercover investigating Jeffries, just like you are.”

“Oh wow,” Clint said, blinking. His lips twitched, and then relief and happiness washed over his face like the sun rising over the sea. “I—fuck, that’s—I, I don’t even know what to say.” He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving once, twice. “That is such a goddamn relief, you have no fucking idea,” he said, muffled through his fingers. “Or, well, I guess you do, don’t you? Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Phil said gently, resting one hand on Clint’s shoulder, which was warm and solid and dense with muscle, good to look at and better to touch. “I really, really do.”

“And SHIELD,” Clint said, lifting his head and scrubbing the back of his hand across his eyes, sniffing a little and then obviously trying to pull himself together. “I actually have a buddy works for SHIELD,” he said. “I’ve always thought someday maybe—just, that is so cool. My soulmate’s, like, a modern-day Howling Commando.”

“I’m really glad you’re not a mobster,” Phil told him. It was a ridiculous, almost insulting understatement, but it was all he could manage through the wild exultation that was fizzing through his body like cheap wine.

Clint chuckled. “ _I’m_ really glad Melanie isn’t really your wife.”

“Melinda,” Phil said. “And no, we’ve never been like that.”

“What about—” Clint reached up and touched his own lip, indicating the spot where Phil’s was still sore where Melinda had bitten it.

“Cover,” Phil shrugged. “We’d just been planting bugs, you guys nearly caught us, we had to have some reason to still be in the hall.”

“So the, um, sounds...” Clint’s ears turned red. “I mean, it’s not my business what you did before we met, I just…”

“All acting,” Phil assured him.

“Oh,” Clint said, sounding relieved. “Um, you were really convincing. I might have been kind of pissed about it.”

“Melinda and I have worked together a long time,” Phil said. “We’re good mission partners, and good friends, which is why—oh, shit.”

“What?”

“You and I have been having near misses ever since we came on board,” Phil said, the pieces falling into place. “No wonder Mel and I have been at each other’s throats. We’ve been stuck together in that cabin—” 

“And every time she brushed past you on the way to the bathroom you felt like you wanted to claw your skin off,” Clint said. “Yeah, same. God, I think Uncle Vitya was about to toss me over the side.”

“Is he your mission partner?”

“Vitya?” Clint chuckled. “No, he’s actually my uncle. Well. Adopted uncle, sort of. It’s complicated. I needed an in, Uncle Vitya had a cousin who was into some shit, he agreed to help out. I just wanted some introductions, but he’s kinda protective, you might have noticed. He wouldn’t do it unless he came with me.” He shrugged. “I think he always looks at me and sees a scrawny ten-year-old with a black eye and a bad attitude.”

“I know what that’s like,” Phil said. “I met my mentor at SHIELD when I was seventeen. I’m in my damn forties now and he still calls me ‘kid’ half the time when we’re alone.”

They smiled at each other, and Phil got lost for a while just looking at him, memorizing the way his face looked in the dim light. He wished, suddenly, that he was an artist, that he had a camera or a sketchpad or a wad of clay, that he could capture forever the way his soulmate looked at him on the day they met.

“God, okay,” Clint said at last, closing his eyes. “Okay. If I don’t make myself think about my damn job for five minutes I’m gonna regret it later, but I’m not sure I can move away. Would it be okay if I, like, hugged you and we figured out what the hell we’re going to do about Jeffries so we can spend the rest of the night figuring out the soulmate thing?”

“Yeah,” Phil said, feeling his heart skip a beat; maybe it was weird, but he’d always found competence and dedication a huge turn-on. He was trying really hard not to assume anything about what Clint would want out of the soulbond; most bonds turned sexual and romantic, but there were always people who didn’t do sex, or romance, or who weren’t sexually attracted to their soulmate’s gender, or any of a number of other reasons. He didn’t want to ask for anything Clint wouldn’t want to give. 

“Okay,” Clint said again. He turned sideways on the chaise, putting his side toward Phil, and held out his right arm invitingly. Phil pressed himself against Clint’s side, wrapping his arm around Clint’s waist, and Clint let the weight of his arm rest across Phil’s shoulders, hand curving over his upper arm. They both sighed at the contact, their bodies relaxing into each other more. It was strange; his body was alight with awareness of Clint, a fathomless desire swirling around the edges of his mind, but the more they touched, the calmer Phil felt, the more able to wait. Phil turned his head and met Clint’s eyes, their faces so close he could feel Clint’s breath.

It was turn away or kiss the man, so Phil turned back to look out over the railing at the dark sea.

“So,” Clint said. “I’m guessing your soulmate protocol is something like ours: isolate and accelerate?”

“Basically,” Phil said. “I’ll need to talk to Melinda. If there’s any possible way we can still meet the mission objectives, we need to try.”

“My situation’s a bit more complicated,” Clint said. “I don’t have any way to communicate with my team while we’re on the water—I have dead drops scheduled at the ports, but we’re at sea all day tomorrow so the soonest I could get a message out would be Barcelona, and they wouldn’t be able to do much until Marseille.” 

“Can you tell me more about your mission?” Phil asked. “Frankly, I’m a bit surprised we didn’t know about each other; SHIELD ran background checks on all four of you who were working security for Jeffries. Usually, that would have raised a flag and our inter-agency liaisons would have gotten involved.”

“It’s weird,” Clint agreed. “I mean, our SAC’s kind of a hardass, but she’s good about information sharing. Says it causes too many fuckups otherwise. Our AD’s more paranoid about it, though, maybe he figured you guys didn’t need to know?”

“We’ll look into it,” Phil said. “More important right now, though, is what we can do over the next few days. Do you have short-term objectives?”

“Yeah, I—look, how much do you know about Jeffries? I don’t want to tell you shit you already know.” He tilted his head. “Actually, come to think of it, why are you after him in the first place? I thought SHIELD was all weird shit, not organized crime stuff.”

“We are,” Phil said. “We think Jeffries is using ‘weird shit,’ as you call it, to win his games. Melinda and I are here to figure out how he’s doing it and ascertain the best way to proceed from there.”

“Whereas we don’t really care much _how_ he’s cheating, we just care about how every time he plays, Mikhail Ivankov makes a couple hundred grand betting on it.”

Phil sucked in air through his teeth. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Clint said. “Ivankov’s been consolidating power in a big way since that mess in Chechnya earlier this year; the last thing we need is for him to use Jeffries to build up enough capital to wipe out the competition. He pretty much owns Brighton Beach at this point already, and if he manages to start spreading down the coast there’s no telling how bad things could get. My target was actually supposed to be Ivankov; the security company is one of his. It’s clean, but word is Ivankov uses it as a sort of mobster finishing school, picks people out of the ranks to work the illegal jobs once he’s sure they’re loyal.” Clint squeezed Phil’s shoulder a little, heaving a sigh. “I’ve been under for almost a year,” he said. “I’d been working my way up the ladder, trying to get people to trust me. The Jeffries job was actually my first special assignment.”

“Special how?”

“Jeffries isn’t paying market for our services,” Clint said. “I’m not sure he’s paying at all. We were all told to be extra careful with him, because he’s a VIP. Rumor is, once you start working with VIP clients, it’s not too long before you get hired on full time private, and then nobody seems to ever see you again.”

Phil tightened his grip around Clint’s waist. “I’m not terribly happy with the idea of that being your mission objective.”

Clint laughed, a rumbling, raspy chuckle that Phil wanted to crawl right up inside. “Right? You and my brother both. But it’s a moot point, now, anyway; I’m not getting in there now, not with a brand new soulmate they don’t know anything about. I hate to leave a job unfinished, but the best I can do right now is try to get everything I can while we’re traveling and then tell everyone I’m moving to Palm Springs to be your kept man.”

“At least it gives you a good way to get out without burning the cover,” Phil said thoughtfully. “It means any intel you’ve managed to gather will still be good. And if SHIELD can find a way to neutralize Jeffries without bringing you into it—”

“It’d be a win-win,” Clint agreed. “So, it sounds like we need to bring your partner in.”

“Yeah.” Phil thought for a moment, fiddling with the pillow in his lap with his free hand. “That might be tricky, seeing as how she’s in between your uncle and the other two, but—wait.” He felt something hard, and reached inside the case. “Thank you, Melinda.” He pulled out a small, familiar shape: a short-range comm unit. He held it up. “Shall we?”

“Yeah, I think we’d better,” Clint agreed. Phil slipped the comm into his ear and activated the high-priority signal. Before two minutes had gone by, the channel opened with a little hiss of static. 

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Phil said, giving the all-clear countersign. “The minute hand on my watch is broken.”

“Good,” Melinda said. “Just checking. So is this where you apologize and ask me to let you back in?”

“I met my soulmate.”

There was silence for a moment. 

“That… was not what I expected you to say,” Melinda said at last. “Congratulations, and also I mean this in nothing but the most respectful way but goddammit, _seriously?_ Right now?”

“I know, I know,” Phil said. “But, Melinda—it’s Sokolov.”

_“What.”_

“But that’s not his real name, his real name’s Clint Barton—he’s undercover. FBI.”

“Is he there right now?”

“Of course he’s here right now, we’re in the middle of our bonding period. You know how this works.”

“I want to talk to him. Give him the comm.”

“She wants to talk to you,” Phil told Clint.

Clint shrugged. “Sure.”

Phil passed the comm over, and Clint hooked it into his ear easily. “Special Agent Barton speaking.” He started tracing shapes onto Phil’s shoulder with his finger, sending a delicious chill up the back of his neck.

“Not nearly as surprised as I was, ma’am,” he continued, “but I’m happy.” He squeezed Phil a little, and Phil leaned against him a bit more heavily as he listened to whatever Melinda was saying.

“We honestly haven’t had a chance to talk about it—no, we wanted to try to get the case squared away first. Right. No, I was just supposed to be building trust and looking for intel, we didn’t anticipate things coming to a head this soon. Right, that’s what Phil and I were thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

He handed the comm back to Phil. “Okay, this is gonna get a little Who’s-On-First, but let’s see if we can’t come up with a plan. I’ll try to stay close enough that the mic can pick me up, and you can tell me what your partner is saying.”

Phil put the comm on the ear facing Clint. “Maybe if we put the sides of our heads together, the sound would travel enough to work?” He pulled off his glasses and tilted his head toward Clint.

Clint laughed. “Like we’re teenagers sharing a pair of earphones? Sure, let’s try.” 

It wasn’t the most comfortable position—their shoulders got in the way—but Phil’s heartbeat still raced at the feel of Clint’s stubbled cheek pressed against his own. 

Mission now, he reminded himself sternly. Bonding later.

“Mel, do you copy?”

“You’re muffled, but I can make you out. Barton, say something.”

“Roger,” Clint said.

“Okay, seems like this will work. So. First things first, does anyone know you’ve bonded?”

“Petrov saw us exchange words,” Phil said. “I doubt he’ll have told anyone, though.”

“He’s really my uncle,” Clint said. “He’s an ally; he won’t say anything unless I ask him to. He’ll back our play, whatever it is.”

“We need to get you two isolated and bonding as soon as we can,” Melinda said. “We don’t make port again for more than twenty-four hours, so that gives us some breathing room.”

“We’re thinking that the best way to play it is to pretend that Sokolov and Clark are the new soulmates,” Phil said. “That gives Clint an easy way out without burning his cover and explains why we’ll suddenly need to be together all the time.”

“Plus, I don’t know if this helps, but Tyler’s a creepy asshole,” Clint said. “He’s got a thing for trying to hit on women he thinks are vulnerable—just broke up, dog just died, that kind of thing. If he thought Melanie Clark was upset about her husband’s new soulmate…”

“It could give me an in,” Melinda said thoughtfully. “God knows I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to strike up an acquaintance with Jennifer.”

“Yeah, she’s not the friendliest person,” Clint said. “And she pinches.”

“Please tell me I’m going to get to arrest her,” Phil muttered.

Clint grinned, creasing the side of his face where it was pressed against Phil’s. “You’re better off with Tyler, honestly,” he told Melinda. “He’s easy to lead around by the dick; you don’t even wanna see his strip club tabs. Only thing is, he’s got this gold-digger paranoia thing going on; you have to get him to think that it’s his idea.”

“Hmm,” Phil said. “So if, theoretically, he were to witness Peter and Melanie having a huge fight about Peter’s new soulmate…”

“Yeah, I think he’d go for it,” Clint agreed.

“I know what we do,” Melinda said, in a tone of voice Phil knew well, a tone that meant “I broke the code” or “I picked the lock” or “I found the guard’s patrol maps.”

“Yeah?”

“First,” Melinda said, “Barton, you have to make sure that the whole group goes to the Hasselhoff Meet and Greet Brunch tomorrow.”

The planning went quickly from there, Barton taking part so naturally that Phil kept forgetting he wasn’t actually a SHIELD agent himself, a thought that filled him with a half-formed hope he wasn’t ready to articulate. When they had everything worked out, Melinda said, “Okay, put Phil back on alone, please.”

Clint moved away, just a few inches but enough to make Phil’s whole torso feel cold.

“I’m here, Mel.”

“I just wanted to say… congratulations, Phil.” Her voice was soft, almost wistful. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks,” Phil said simply, thinking of the orange-red splotch of Melinda’s own incomplete soulmark, curving across her calf muscle. They’d never talked about it, but sometimes when they’d been patching each other up after an op got a little hairy, they’d exchanged rueful looks, a moment of solidarity over the frustrations and hopes of an incomplete bond. “I owe you a drink or ten when we get home for putting up with me through all this.”

“I’ll take you up on it,” she promised. “Goodnight.”

“Sleep well.”

He disconnected the line and took off the comm, hiding it back inside the pillowcase. Every cell of his skin felt aware of Clint beside him, but now that there was nothing holding them back, Phil felt strangely reluctant to take the next step.

“So,” Clint said, scrubbing his hands over his short-cropped hair. “Um, this is probably going to sound really weird, but I have no idea what to do right now.”

Phil slumped in relief. “Same,” he said. “I mean, we only just met, but I feel like—”

“—like if someone tried to take you away from me, I’d kill them with my bare hands,” Clint said. “Um. That sounded bad. I promise I’m really not a violent person. I mean, except for, you know. In the line of duty.”

“No, I understand,” Phil said. “I mean, I can know intellectually all about hormone surges and neurotransmitter storms but that doesn’t make it feel any less intense.”

“I—do you—shit,” Clint said. “Look, there’s no way to ease into this or hint around it, especially because I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin. So I’m just gonna spit it out, and if it comes out wrong I hope we can put it down to the bond making me nuts, okay?”

Phil nodded, a lump in his throat getting in the way of words.

“I want to kiss you,” Clint said, and Phil could see the light moving over his arms as he clenched his fists in his lap. “I want to take you somewhere and curl up naked in a nest of blankets with you and not come out until I’ve memorized your body. I want to get to know you and fall in love with you and live with you forever, I want us to be one of those old couples that hold hands everywhere and kids think it’s adorable. But I only want that if you want it too.” He took a deep breath, and Phil breathed, too; he thought it was the first time since Clint started talking, since Clint’s words had filled him with a longing so intense it was almost pain. “I know it’s the hormones making me feel like this, I know we only just met. But I’ve been dreaming about meeting you since I was seven years old, so, so, if you don’t want—”

“Clint,” Phil forced the word out, even though the world was spinning around him, gone lightheaded as though the stars themselves were dancing. “Yes.”

Clint looked at him, eyes wide and gleaming in the low light. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, kiss me,” Phil said, his heart hammering, exultant and nervous and so happy he thought he could light up the sky. “Yes, all of it. Yes, I want that life with you.” He raised his hand to cup Clint’s face, stroking his shaky thumb over a tear that had trailed down his cheek. “I’ve been dreaming, too.”

_“Oh,”_ Clint breathed, and then he reached out, impossibly fast, grabbing Phil and hauling him bodily into his lap, clutching him against his chest and burying his face in Phil’s neck. Phil gave himself over wholeheartedly, holding on hard to Clint’s heaving back and pressing kisses into the velvety fuzz of his hair. He didn’t know how long they sat there clinging to one another, a tangle of limbs and emotion, before a particularly cutting gust of wind swept over them, making them both shiver. Clint sighed, long and wavering, and lifted his head.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you know somewhere we can go that’s both out of the wind and currently empty?” he asked, his voice rough. “Because Vitya and your partner have both been really understanding but I don’t think either of them would want to be in an enclosed space with us right now.”

Phil forced himself to pull his attention away from the span of Clint’s shoulders and remember the reconnaissance he and Melinda had performed earlier. “How are you at lockpicking?” he asked.

“I am _great_ at lockpicking,” Clint said. 

Phil grinned. “Then follow me.”

The Teen Lounge on the ship closed at midnight and didn’t re-open until after breakfast. It was locked, but Clint had the door open in less than a minute, with a deftness that had Phil coming up with increasingly feverish daydreams about other ways he might be good with his hands. The room was dark when they slipped inside, just enough light coming through the windows to keep them from tripping over anything. Phil still had the pillow with the comm unit hidden inside; Clint had jimmied the door of a supply closet on the way and helped himself to a couple of blankets. They’d joined hands again when they started walking, and moved together through the room toward a corner that offered good visibility on the door without being too visible through the windows.

“Aw, sweet,” Clint said. “Phil, look, it’s a giant beanbag chair.”

“Sounds as good a place as any,” Phil said, shivering a little in anticipation. He’d had a lot of sex over the years—he was in a high-adrenaline profession, after all, where you tended to almost die a fair bit—but he’d never felt like this, not any of the times, not even the first time; this was something entirely new. 

Clint tugged the beanbag into place and spread it with a blanket, then carefully took Phil’s pillow and placed it on the top. “Ta-da,” he said, waving his arm at it. “Have a seat.”

Phil settled into the spot Clint had made for him, sighing a little at the warmth of the blanket against his chilled legs. He unzipped Clint’s jacket and leaned back, turning sideways a little and stretching his arm out across the back of the beanbag, making a space. “Well, come on, then,” he said, his calm tone belying his galloping heart. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

Clint whimpered, then practically dove into the space beside Phil on the beanbag. He took a moment to shake the blanket out over them, and then they were reaching for each other, tangling their legs together and pressing their bodies close. There was desperation in it, but it wasn’t harsh; each touch was full of tenderness and longing and anticipation. 

When their lips finally met for the first time, Phil could feel a sort of shudder pass through them both, a wave of relief, as though something fundamental inside him was saying _yes, yes, finally_. Time seemed to slow like honey as they kissed, close-mouthed and soft; they kissed until Phil’s lips were buzzing and sensitized, until every breath Clint drew had a tiny sobbing whine underneath it. 

He traced the seam of Clint’s lips with his tongue, tentative and inquiring, and Clint opened for him with a moan, letting Phil roll on top of him and press him down into the beanbag. Phil wanted to explore him, taste and kiss him everywhere, but they were both supremely conscious of their location, of the risk, and had agreed that all the clothes they were currently wearing had to stay on that night.

Still, though. That wasn’t much of a barrier—oh. Speaking of barriers.

Phil separated himself from Clint’s mouth with difficulty, nosing reassuringly along his cheekbone when he made a protesting sound.

“We should probably talk about fluid exposure,” he said, feeling quite proud of himself for getting the whole sentence out before moving over to nibble on Clint’s earlobe.

“ _Now_ we should talk about it?” Clint gasped. He had his arms wound around Phil, under the jacket, his fingers stroking over and over the patch of bare skin at Phil’s waist where his shirt was riding up. “What happened to—shit, yes, right there—to keeping our clothes on?”

“Well, we do have the blanket,” Phil said reasonably. “Mmm. They could be _on_ and still be, er, disarranged.”

“It’s nice to know my soulmate’s a genius,” Clint said, and stuck his hands down the back of Phil’s shorts. “Fuck, you’ve got a great ass.”

Phil buried his groan in Clint’s shoulder. “I’m glad you approve,” he said. 

Clint grinned, his teeth gleaming in the dim light from the window. “So anyway, _fluid exposure_ ,” he said, giving Phil’s ass a proprietary squeeze. “No concerns about that on my end; field work’s high risk, obviously, but I’m usually more of a long-distance guy.”

“Oh really?” Phil asked, distracted from the lovely arch of Clint’s collarbone. “How so?”

“I’m a sharpshooter,” Clint said. “I’m actually on loan from hostage rescue for this op; my brother’s a senior agent, they needed a new face, I had the Russian and the connections, we worked something out.”

_“Really,”_ Phil said, his mind spinning. This was even better than he’d thought. “How attached are you to staying in the FBI for the rest of your career?”

“You’ve got a really bizarre sense of conversational timing,” Clint said, arching his back and pulling down on Phil’s ass. Phil groaned as their erections rubbed together, shooting bolts of pleasure up his spine.

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Clint said. “We’re kinda trying to do everything at once, I get the impulse. So, A, I am definitely open to exploring new career opportunities if it might mean that next time you’re _my_ undercover husband, and B, we kinda got away from the fluids conversation and I’d really like to know if I can suck your dick in a minute.”

Phil shuddered, his cock jerking at the thought. “You absolutely can do that if you want to,” Phil said, his voice coming out breathless. “Last time I was on monitor & prophylaxis protocol was two years ago, so I’m good.”

“Mission?”

“Yeah, amateur mistake. Punched a guy in the mouth, cut my knuckle on his tooth, he bit his tongue; you know the drill.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “Plus, I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Bioweapons trafficking,” Phil said.

“Totally deserved it.” Clint smirked up at him, and it was a moral imperative for Phil to taste the wry curve of his mouth.

Some time later, Clint hooked a leg around Phil’s hips and flipped them neatly over, the beanbag squeaking as he bore Phil down into it with his bodyweight. Phil had long ago stopped feeling cold; he was sweating, panting for breath, and as hard as he could ever remember being, his cock straining the loose shorts and his tank top rucked up into his armpits. He felt amazing; it was kind of strange, actually. Any other time he’d been this turned on for this long, by now he’d have been desperate to come, but there was something precious about rolling around with Clint under a blanket, their clothes still mostly on and one ear always listening for interruptions. Maybe it was just that they were bonding, but Phil felt like he’d be happy if they just kept on going forever.

Clint bent down and sucked on one of Phil’s nipples, and Phil had to stuff his fist in his mouth to keep from howling. Clint pulled off with a smack, grinning down at Phil wickedly. 

“Some day,” he promised, “we are going to go somewhere soundproofed, and I’m going to keep trying until I get you to make all those noises you’re stifling.”

Phil, chest still heaving, gave him a weak thumbs-up, and Clint barked a laugh.

“God, you’re perfect,” he said, moving to give Phil’s other nipple the same treatment, and Phil was quickly reduced to incoherence as Clint moved down his torso, kissing and nipping and sucking wherever it struck his fancy. When he hit the waistband of Phil’s shorts he paused, resting his hand on Phil’s hip.

“Shall I disarrange you?” he asked, laughing.

“Please,” Phil said, reaching out to touch his face, to feel the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the velvet of his hair.

Clint lifted the elastic carefully, pulling shorts and underwear over Phil’s erection and down just far enough to be out of the way, lifting his balls carefully and making sure they weren’t going to get pinched. “Oh, wow,” he murmured, looking down at where Phil’s cock was leaking onto his belly. “Baby, I am gonna have _fun_ with you.”

Phil leaned up on his elbows, trying to pull together a sardonic eyebrow raise. He was fairly sure he only got as far as “besotted grin,” but whatever. “Are you talking to me, or to my dick?”

“Yes,” Clint said, licking his lips. He’d worked his way down to kneel on the floor between Phil’s knees, the waistband of Phil’s shorts keeping Phil’s thighs tight to Clint’s sides. “You just lay back and relax, I might be a while down here.”

“I don’t know if I can last ‘a while,’ but I’ll do my best,” Phil promised. “I, ah. I’ve never done this bare before.” He felt his ears get hot, wondering for a moment if that was too much to put on Clint all at once, if Clint was put off or, or thought he—

“Fuck,” Clint breathed. “Every time I think you can’t possibly get any hotter.” Clint pressed a quick kiss on Phil’s hipbone. “Did—was it for safety reasons, or—nevermind, it doesn’t matter.”

Phil ran his hands through Clint’s hair again, relishing the way he leaned back into it, eyes closing, long lashes like fans on his cheeks. “Some of it was safety, yes,” he said. “But mostly… I was keeping that for you.”

Clint shuddered all over, and Phil could feel goosebumps rising on the skin of his flanks where it pressed against the insides of Phil’s thighs. “I’ll take whatever you want to give me,” he said, breathless. “A minute, or an hour, I don’t care which. We’ve got lots of time to get wild later.”

Phil considered their current condition and shivered at the thought of what Clint might consider “getting wild.” He cleared his throat. “In that case, do with me as you will.”

Clint lifted Phil’s cock in one hand, his interesting callouses—Phil had to remember to ask what they were from—rasping deliciously over the delicate skin. He seemed to be… inspecting it, almost, leaning in to look closely in the faint light, his breath hot and moist and tantalizing. Phil felt like his skin was expanding, touch receptors straining for contact.

Clint nuzzled the base of Phil’s cock, breathing in deeply. 

“Um, I haven’t showered since last night,” Phil said. “I’m sorry if—”

“Hush, you’re fine,” Clint said, planting a tiny sucking kiss at the base of Phil’s cock that made him jolt, the sensation so much more intense on naked skin. “I like the way you smell.”

“…okay,” Phil said, letting his head flop back onto the pillow as Clint started tracing a meandering path up his cock with soft, wet lips. “You just…” he waved his hand, trying to catch his breath. “Do your thing.”

“I’d rather do _your_ thing,” Clint said, and Phil’s groan at the pun transmuted into a sobbing cry as Clint opened his mouth wide and took Phil inside, pushing himself down until Phil could feel the start of his throat and then pulling back up with a pop.

“It’s been a while,” Clint said, “but I’m pretty sure I can work up to deep-throating you if you can hold still for me, do you think you can?”

For a short, terrifying moment, Phil wondered if he’d hit his head when Melinda threw him out of the cabin and this whole night was some sort of TBI-induced hallucination. Then he told himself that even if it was, he wouldn’t do anything differently.

“I won’t move,” he promised, his voice catching.

Clint licked his lips again, waggled his jaw, and set to work.

Phil clenched his fists in the blanket, his thighs tensing with the effort it took not to fuck up into Clint’s mouth. Clint was doing a fine job of it without any help, getting more of Phil’s cock down his throat with each bob of his head, swallowing around him and then drawing back to lap at Phil’s cockhead with a soft and lavish tongue. Phil lost track of time—time, and his position in space, and his working memory of where he was and why he was on a beanbag chair in the closed Teen Lounge of a cruise ship; his entire world had narrowed to the hot flex of Clint’s throat and the lush tenderness of his lips and the firm strength of his hands.

“God, darlin’,” Clint rasped, pulling off, his fingers releasing Phil’s hips with reluctance. “God, you look amazing, holding yourself so still for me so I could have you like that, thank you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Phil tried to say, but his throat was dry from gasping for air and it mostly came out as a croak.

Clint rubbed fondly over Phil’s belly. “One’a these days I want you to come all over me,” he said, “but in the interests of practicality, how about you finish in my mouth this time?”

Phil nodded helplessly.

“Kay,” Clint said, “Just, anytime, okay? Don’t try to hold back anymore.” He sealed his mouth back around Phil’s cock, and then everything that he’d done before was apparently the warmup, because he somehow made it better; more tongue and more suction and the tight grip of his throat, and Phil started keening with each breath, teetering on the edge of orgasm but not—quite—

Clint reached down and rolled Phil’s balls with one hand, and Phil gasped and kicked his legs out involuntarily and came and came and came. Clint swallowed around him, throat working, and then drew back carefully, catching Phil’s softening cock with one hand and holding it gently as he wiggled the tension out of his jaw.

“Not too shabby,” he said, smug, and Phil burst into wheezy, uncoordinated laughter.

“If you’d been any better I think I would have yelled the place down,” he managed. “I wonder if indecent exposure is a crime in international waters.”

“I actually have no idea,” Clint said. “It’s never come up. Heh. Come up.” He leaned his cheek on Phil’s hip, and Phil fumbled one hand over to stroke over his head with fingers stiff from clutching the blanket.

“Oh, did I mention I also fly helicopters?” Clint said, grinning cheekily up at him, and Phil’s cock actually twitched out another pulse of come to dribble down Clint’s knuckles.

“How are you real,” Phil groaned.

“I said the same thing to myself when I saw you in that suit in Rome,” Clint said. “Which, by the way, we are totally going back and buying before we head home.”

“It’s really expensive,” Phil warned.

“Worth it,” Clint said. “Plus I’ve been getting hazard differential the whole time I was under but living off my pay from the security company, so I’ve got a little room to splurge.” He licked his hand, and Phil groaned again. 

“Get up here and kiss me,” he said, “and then let me see about returning the favor.”


	5. Still-life with Mimosa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Phil finally know the truth... now they just have to deal with the mission so they can have some time to bond.

  


**_November 9, 2004, 6:03 am_ **

Phil parted from Clint with a last lingering kiss in the hall outside their cabins, watching while he slipped silently through his door. He pulled the comm unit back out of the pillowcase and sent a ping.

“What,” Melinda said after a minute.

“I’m outside,” Phil whispered. “Can you let me in, please?”

She sighed, and a moment later the door opened. He slipped inside, catching the door to make sure it didn’t slam closed. Melinda flipped the light on, making him blink in the glare, and looked him up and down with an unimpressed expression.

“Dear god,” she said. “I didn’t realize you’d spent the night in a John Hughes movie.”

He blinked at her. “Huh?”

She jerked her head toward the mirror, and he looked. Oh. He was red-eyed and stubbled and had pillow creases on his face. His shorts and tank were miraculously unstained, but were wrinkled and askew; several hickeys were visible on his neck and chest; his hair was sticking straight up where Clint had kept running his hands through it while they kissed; and he was still wearing Clint’s jacket, which was obviously a size too big for him. The whole ensemble did kind of scream “walk of shame.”

Walk of pride, maybe. Phil grinned to himself, remembering.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Melinda said. “You’re insufferable. Go take a shower, you smell like a rutting billygoat.”

He didn’t ask how she knew—SHIELD missions took you strange places sometimes—just went into the bathroom obediently. It gave him a chance to rub over the stubble burn on his thighs and daydream about what he was going to do with Clint as soon as they managed to be alone together with access to a bed.

Melinda stuck her head inside the bathroom. _“Stop humming.”_

“…sorry.”

She was gone when he got out of the shower, left on one of her pre-dawn runs; it was hard for a Specialist to get enough physical activity on undercover missions, so Melinda had taken to running several times a day in different parts of the ship, trying to come across more as an ordinary fitness nut than a world-class athlete missing her training routine. Phil puttered around, trying to put together an outfit that said “schlubby” and “sleazy” in equal measure. He decided on cargo shorts—it was a little chilly, but the aesthetic was too good to pass up—and a plaid button-down, worn open over a t-shirt with a v-neck that showed off at least two of his hickeys from the night before. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, so he skipped the contacts. On inspecting himself in the mirror, he decided not to shave, though he did brush his teeth really thoroughly, unable to help smirking at himself in the mirror a little at how puffy his lips were, how reddened around the edges.

Then, with several hours to go before the brunch, he set an alarm and lay down on top of the covers to catch a little sleep. The extra wrinkles in his clothes would only add to the desired effect.

The David Hasselhoff Fan Meet-and-Greet Brunch started promptly at ten, so Phil showed up a finely-calculated eighteen minutes late. A quick reconnaissance showed that Melinda had managed to get herself at a table next to the Jeffries party; Tyler and Jennifer were at one table talking with an investment banker from Munich and her husband, while the Russians—well, the three Russians and Clint—were scattered around. Smirnov and Kuzmenko were leaning against the deck railing, watching the crowd; Petrov was next to the buffet, eating mini-quiches at a remarkable rate; and Clint—Alex, he had to remember to call him Alex—was nursing what looked like an entire carafe of coffee, wearing dark sunglasses and a tracksuit that looked like it had spent the night wadded up on the floor while also being trampled on. 

(This was not entirely untrue.)

Phil stood for a moment, caught out by the way his heart jumped in his chest at the way Clint’s knobby fingers curled gracefully around the handle of the carafe, and trying not to let himself think too much about what those same fingers had looked like curled around Phil’s cock, just a few hours before. He was supposed to make a scene today, but not _that_ sort of a scene. 

Phil moved toward Melinda, trying to channel Jasper Sitwell’s uncanny ability to draw attention while looking like he was trying to be subtle, letting his elbows flail a little, his hip catch on the sides of chairs; just enough to get people watching.

“Morning, dear,” he said, overly-hearty.

“Oh,” Melinda said icily. “So there you are at last, then. I should have expected this; not three days out and already you’re out looking for somewhere to stick it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Phil said, unconvincingly.

“Oh, don’t give me that, Peter!” Melinda spat. “I’m sick of pretending. How many times do you expect me to look the other way while you go crawling into someone else’s bed? I suppose it’s that Russian twink next door; God knows you haven’t stopped looking at his ass for ten minutes the whole time we’ve been here.”

“Melanie, that isn’t fair!” Phil said, letting the thread of geniune indigation that flared up at the insult to Clint coil up at the base of his throat. His voice got a little louder, a little more strident; he threw in a bit of nasally whine for good measure.

(He hadn’t been looking at Clint’s ass, not before last night. Had he? Surely he would have noticed if he had. Clint’s ass was very noticeable.)

“Fair? Don’t talk to me about _fair,”_ she spat, getting up in his space. He stepped back, toward the center of the brunch area, feeling the eyes settling on them as they got more and more obvious.

She yanked his overshirt half off his shoulder and pulled his t-shirt collar down. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you have no idea where _these_ came from?” she demanded, poking one of Clint’s hickeys with her finger. Phil winced. “Because it sure as hell wasn’t from me.”

“Melanie, baby, it’s not like the other times!” Phil protested. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Clint circling around, the crowd turning in to face them.

“And why not? How could it possibly be different? Because you’ve never cheated on me in _international waters_ before?”

Phil half-turned, holding out his arm, and Clint, with perfect timing, stepped up and took his hand, crowding in behind him and meeting his eyes with a look so perfectly besotted Phil almost broke character to laugh at the sheer cheesy beauty of it. “Because Alex,” Phil declared, in a clear, ringing voice, “is my soulmate!”

The crowd gasped.

_“What,”_ Melinda hissed—impressive in a word with no sibilants.

“He’s my soulmate, Melanie! He said my words and I said his!” Phil gestured extravagantly with the hand Clint wasn’t holding; he could see movement along the edges of the crowd, but couldn’t spare the attention just then. “We’re destined for each other.”

“You lying son of a bitch!” Melinda spat. “You told me your soulmark said _‘Welcome to Yellowknife, home of the 2044 Winter Olympics!’_ ”

“I had to tell you _something!”_ Phil snapped, defensive. “You wouldn’t let it go, you just _had_ to know! You couldn’t just _trust_ me!” Clint patted his shoulder.

“And obviously I was right not to!” Melinda jabbed his chest with her finger again, punctuating her words. “You said you didn’t want to wait! You said you believed in a love that we chose for ourselves!” Melinda gulped a harsh breath, letting her voice thicken. “You said you loved me more than any soulmate—it was all a lie, wasn’t it? It was all a fucking lie! You were just out for what you could get from me!”

Phil backed up a step, running into Clint’s chest. It was a very pleasant place to run into, he couldn’t help noticing. “That’s not true! I meant everything I said, I just—I didn’t realize what it would be like, I didn’t know how it would feel when I met him, like—like everything missing in my life just appeared right in front of me!”

“Oh, _Petrushenka,”_ Clint crooned. Phil heard someone—probably one of the Russians, who would know what a sickeningly sappy nickname that was—snort. Phil reached back with one hand, clutching at Clint’s hip, and reached the other out toward Melinda, trying to look imploring. “I still love you, baby,” he said, in a wheedling tone that set his own teeth on edge. “This doesn’t have to be the end!” 

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you!” She glared at them, raking over Clint with steely death in her eyes. “You’d like to set this, this muscle-bound floozy up in a nice little love nest somewhere, make him your kept man and keep him with _my money!”_

_And…. Bingo,_ Phil thought, watching Tyler Jeffries’ eyes widen over Melinda’s shoulder. _Bait, set, hook_.

“It’s _our_ money!” Phil protested. “California is a community property state!”

“Is that why you wouldn’t sign a prenup? You _bastard!_ You said it took away the romance of it! You fucking little weasel-dicked asshole, Peter, just you wait, I’ll _ruin_ you!” She sobbed theatrically, and a ripple of sympathy moved through the crowd. “I, I can’t believe you’d do this to me!” she cried. “Humiliating me like this, _in front of David Hasselhoff!_ ” She flung out one arm, and Phil turned, to see David Hasselhoff standing three feet away holding a mimosa and a plate of mini-quiches, staring at the scene with his jaw hanging open like a landed fish.

“Fuck you, Peter,” she said into the shocked silence. “Fuck you and your Russian whore!” She took a long step forward, grabbed David Hasselhoff’s mimosa, and flung the contents into Phil’s face, then followed by hurling the flute at him and bursting into sobs. The flute bounced off Phil’s chest and shattered on the deck, and he watched through a sticky orange veil as Tyler Jeffries and David Hasselhoff each put an arm around Melinda and ushered her away toward the mimosa bar.

Phil pulled his glasses off and swabbed at them uselessly with the tail of his drenched shirt, making sure to keep his expression as gormless as possible. “A-alex?” he asked, looking nervously around at the excited, muttering crowd that was moving restlessly. “Are you okay?”

Clint’s big arm curved round him protectively, and Phil could see him glaring daggers at someone over Phil’s shoulder. “Come, Petya,” he said, playing his accent up for the crowd. “She does not understand about true love. You come with me, I take you away from here.” 

Phil nodded and put his glasses back on, and let Clint steer him away, leaving Melinda in control of the field.

They didn’t speak again until they’d dodged the crowd and made their way back to Phil’s cabin. Phil was planning to pack up his belongings and move in with Clint, to further sell the narrative and give them an excuse to not be seen for a while. 

“That was amazing,” Clint said, as Phil wet a cloth to swab at his sticky face.

“We’ve worked together a long time,” Phil said. “You get good at improv, after a while.”

“You know, I was actually getting mad at her?” Clint said. “I knew damn well it was fake—Peter isn’t even your _name_ —but still, I wanted to jump in and defend you.”

Phil smiled, the admission warming him. “Yeah, I know the feeling,” he said. “Even though we’d planned it out, I still didn’t like the things she called you. And you aren’t even Russian. I mean… are you?”

“Nah,” Clint said. “I’m from Iowa. The Russian stuff… that’s a long story, I’ll tell you later. Why don’t you rinse off the orange juice real quick and I’ll start packing your stuff?”

“Thanks,” Phil agreed, opening his drawer and grabbing whatever clothes were on top. “My suitcase is the blue one. Clothes should be pretty easy to pick out, I’ll get the rest when I’m done.”

He hurried through a quick shower. Now that they were alone and the op handed off, he was starting to crash, the adrenaline leaving his body to be ravaged the aftereffects of blood chemistry swings and a sleepness night. He toweled off halfheartedly and pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a threadbare Captain America t-shirt—Eddie in Wardrobe thought he was a funny man—before shoving his toiletries into his bag and coming back out into the main room.

“Hey,” Clint said softly, smiling at him over the open suitcase. “I think I’ve got most of it, if you wanna double-check?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Phil said, checking drawers and the closet on auto-pilot. “Yeah, that’s everything, let me just get my comms stuff and we’ll go.” He gathered up his laptop and the backup comms set, packing them neatly away, then slung the laptop bag over his shoulder and shoved his feet into a pair of deck shoes, the only ones Clint hadn’t packed.

“Suddenly I feel like I’m going a lot farther than next door,” Phil said.

“If this had all just happened a day later, we could be heading out to find a hotel in Barcelona,” Clint said wryly. “Don’t think I’m not tempted to steal a lifeboat and go for it anyway.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Phil sighed. “Oh well. Needs must.”

They left the room quietly and Clint opened his cabin door. “These rooms technically sleep four, if you pull the bunks down,” he said. “It might be tight but I don’t have any trouble sleeping high, I—oh.” He stepped inside the door and motioned Phil in, eyes bright with emotion.

“Is everything—” Phil stopped, arrested by the sight of Viktor Petrov, who was straightening a red rose in a bud vase that was perched atop the narrow dresser, next to a lavish assortment of room service food. The room had been made up into a double bed, and Phil saw two plush spa robes hanging on the bathroom door.

“Uncle Vitya,” Clint said softly, and Petrov beamed at them through his giant mustache.

“This is happy day, Lyosha,” he said. “Not the best timing maybe, but happy for you and your Petya. At home we would have big party, you know this. Here… well, I do what I can.”

“I can’t put you out of your bed,” Clint protested.

Petrov tsked. “All is already arranged, ptička. I’ll be in the room with the others, and you two will hide yourselves away in here until your bond is finished growing, and then we shall finish our job and go home.”

“I—thank you,” Clint said, his voice gone rough. “I can’t tell you what this means.” He flung his arms around Petrov—well, as far around as he could get them—and squeezed hard. Petrov patted his shoulder tenderly.

“Spasibo, Viktor Basilovich,” Phil said, trying to get his sincerity across in his tone. _Thank you._

Petrov cuffed Clint lightly as he stepped away. “And that, too, we will be discussing later,” he said, as he moved toward the door. “When you can carry on conversation without making sheep’s eyes across the room. Is very distracting.” He paused in the doorway, regarding them with a fond expression on his face. “Take good care of one another,” he said, “but be careful the noise; remember your wife.” Parting shot delivered, he left, closing the door softly behind him.

“Oh, fuck,” Phil breathed. “Melinda’s right behind that wall.”

“Well, then,” Clint said. “I guess we’ll have to find a way to be quiet.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Phil put down his bags and stepped forward just as Clint was opening his arms. They fit together like they’d been embracing for twenty years, like they each knew exactly where the other would put his arms, the precise tilt of the head necessary to avoid bumping noses as they kissed. They stayed there for a while, feeling each other breathe and kissing in between, until finally Clint sighed and nestled his head into the crook of Phil’s shoulder.

“Will it damage my reputation as a temptress,” he said, “if I say what I want more than anything right now is to curl up in that bed with you and take a nap?”

“God, that sounds amazing, let’s do that, please,” Phil groaned. “My eyes feel like hard-boiled eggs.”

They turned down the bed together, working seamlessly without needing to speak. Phil looked at the beautiful expanse of crisp sheet and fluffy pillow and wanted to cry with how suddenly exhausted he was. He looked up, and Clint was looking about the way he felt.

“How do you feel about naked napping?” Clint asked. 

“I feel extremely good about that,” Phil said.

“Cool,” Clint said, and they stripped down, matter-of-fact. They both ogled, but even the great golden span of Clint’s bare skin wasn’t enough to tempt Phil’s exhausted body into anything other than a distant want.

They climbed into bed and rolled to the middle, reaching for each other again. It felt almost ludicrously good to lie naked between cool new sheets and take Clint into his arms. Clint’s body was sleek and hot and smooth, and the last thing Phil remembered thinking before his fatigue caught up with him was a distant wonder whether waxing his chest was a Clint thing or an undercover thing.

  


**_November 9, 2004, 4:19 pm_ **

_Warm_ , was the first thing Phil thought when he woke. He was immobilized, but unusually, he didn’t care; even before he remembered about Clint, all he felt was drowsy and relaxed and safe and content. He felt good, he felt amazingly, uniquely good; he couldn’t ever remember feeling like it before.

Clint hummed, the chest under Phil’s ear reverberating with the sound. Phil patted his belly. “Hey,” he said simply, feeling his face crease in an enormous grin.

“Hey, darlin’,” Clint rumbled. “Sleep good?”

“Great,” Phil said. “God, I feel like all my knots unwound themselves.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Clint said. “I’ve had a titchy ankle since 1998 and I can’t feel a thing. Is it always like this, or is this just some kind of bond-endorphins high?”

“I’m not sure,” Phil admitted. “I don’t think they talked about it in health class, and then later… I was reluctant to research it too much.”

“Felt too much like tempting fate?”

Phil nodded, the rasp of his stubble over Clint’s pec making them both shiver a little.

“I get that,” Clint said. “I got raised superstitious, you know? You can know something ain’t true but that doesn’t mean you don’t still think ‘just in case’ in the back of your mind.”

“Your parents were superstitious?”

“Nah,” Clint said. “My parents died when I was seven. Car crash. From what I was able to learn later… my mark came through right after it happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, stricken.

“No, it was good that it happened then,” Clint said. “I was young for it, but it felt… special, you know? Like, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, going into the system, but if I had a soulmate out there, someday I’d have something good. It got me through a lot of shit.”

“I was in high school when I got mine,” Phil said. “Worrying about where to go, what to major in. I wanted to make sure I had a good life to offer them. You.”

“Fuck, that’s sweet,” Clint said, brushing Phil’s hair off his forehead. “I can just see you, listening to all the stuff they taught you in school and trying to figure out your shit like five years in advance. I bet you were adorable; did you have the glasses then?”

“Yeah,” Phil admitted. “I didn’t get the contacts until college.” He idly traced the outlines of Clint’s abs with his finger. 

“I’d’a probably been all over you,” Clint said. “I mean, if we’d been the same age. I always liked the ones who looked like normal people but could fuck you up if need be.”

“I couldn’t back then,” Phil said. “I didn’t start the martial arts training until college. My mentor’s suggestion; he wanted me to be well-prepared for the SHIELD Academy.”

“That’s why the Russian?”

Phil shrugged. “It was the Cold War,” he said. “I was about to train to be a spy, more or less. It seemed like a useful thing to know.”

“And halfway across the country, a kid in the circus started seeing Cyrillic letters pop up in his soulmark and didn’t know what the hell was happening,” Clint chuckled. “Man, soulmarks are weird.”

“Wait,” Phil said, lifting his head to see Clint’s face. “The circus?”

“Yeah, I didn’t tell you about that?” Clint said. “Me’n my brother Barney ran away from foster care when I was like… ten? Ran off and joined the circus.”

“And they let you stay?” It was hard to believe, but also somehow perfectly fitting. Someone as extraordinary as Clint couldn’t possibly have come from anywhere ordinary, after all.

“We made a good case,” Clint said. “Place we were at before was no good; I turned up with half my face black and blue and Barney had a sprained wrist from where he tried to go after the guy for whaling on me. They weren’t gonna send us back.” He shook his head, his expression faraway. “I didn’t even question it when Barney took us to the fairgrounds; I just wanted outta there, you know? And he was my big brother, he always took care of me, I figured he knew what he was doing. Turns out? His soulmark said ‘You must be the new guy; welcome to Carson’s.’ When he saw the sign for the circus, he says he just knew.”

“So he met his soulmate at Carson’s Circus?”

“Carson’s Carnival of Traveling Wonders,” Clint said, the ring of a showman’s patter in his tone. “And yeah, like the next day. The owner’s daughter, Laura.”

“How’d that go over?” Phil asked, fascinated. 

“It was weird,” Clint said. “Circus folk love soulmates, but old man Carson was terrified Barney was gonna knock her up or something. They were just kids, you know? Still, they managed to bond okay in the end, and they didn’t start having babies until like ’99, so I guess it all worked out. Anyway, once they met each other, nobody talked about us leaving anymore.” He reached down and ruffled Phil’s hair. “And I saw the Flying Vasilievs writing in Russian and realized what was going on with my mark, so that was good. Once I told them why I wanted to learn, they kind of adopted me, said that if my soul’s mate was Russian, I was Russian enough for them.”

“You know, it’s funny,” Phil said. “There was a time when I thought _my_ soulmate might be Russian. I mean, I always tried not to, to build up too much of an image of them, but I’ll admit that particular fantasy owed a lot more to James Bond movies than anything real. You know the kind of thing—she takes off her fur hat and shakes out long red hair and says, ‘what took you so long, comrade,’ that kind of thing.”

Clint snickered. “Classic,” he said. “You wanted a femme fatale, then? I hope you’re not too disappointed.” His tone was light, but there was something tight in the corners of his mouth. Phil leaned up and kissed them.

“Well, sometimes it was a built blond guy,” he said. “I’ve always been pretty equal-opportunity as those things go.”

“Oh, well.” Clint said. “If you want, we can play debonair agent and defecting Russian spy sometime, especially once you get that suit.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Come to think of it, he looked kind of like Ilya Kuriakin,” Phil said thoughtfully, then ducked when Clint made as if to hit him with a pillow. They tussled together on the bed, rolling and and laughing, neither of them trying very hard to win, unless winning was defined as getting a handful of lush, flexing ass.

It made _Phil_ feel pretty much like a winner, at any rate.

An over-enthusiastic roll ended with Phil thumping his leg hard against the wall, and they froze at the sound, holding back silent laughter, while they waited to see if anyone was in the room next door (thankfully, the other side from Melinda’s room.) He was lying face-up on the bed, skewed sideways with one leg hanging off, Clint straddling his waist and holding his wrists down; they were both breathing fast and more than half hard. Clint was flushed halfway down his chest, his nipples drawn up tight; even as Phil looked up into his eyes, he could see the laughter dying away, being replaced with heat.

Phil tried to keep his voice level, even while he felt his heart speed up, his cock hardening the rest of the way. “You got me,” he said, and was surprised how rough his voice was. “So what’re you going to do with me?”

“Anything,” Clint said. “Everything. I wanna do things I don’t even know the _names_ of with you—”

“Yes,” Phil said, arching underneath Clint just to feel his weight pressing him down into the bed. “What do you want most? Right now? Let me give it to you.”

“Your cock,” Clint said. “Fuck, it felt amazing down my throat, Phil, I want it inside me.”

Phil groaned, feeling his cock pulse at the raw desire in Clint’s voice. “Yes, of course, yes,” he said. “How do you want me?”

“You stay right there,” Clint said, his eyes gleaming as he swooped down to kiss Phil deeply. “Lemme grab some lube and then I want to feel you between my thighs again.”

Phil was still reeling with stunned lust when Clint got back from the bathroom, a stack of towels under his arm and an enormous pump-bottle of lube in his other hand.

“Dare I ask?” 

Clint grinned. “Bonding present.”

Phil nodded. “Considerate.” 

“Get up a minute, okay?” Clint said, brandishing the towels. “We’ve only got the one set of sheets and I feel like if we had to call a steward in here I might actually punch someone.” 

Phil stood and helped Clint straighten the covers—knocked awry by their earlier play—and stack the pillows back at the head of the bed. They pulled the duvet out of harm’s way and spread out some towels, and then Clint took Phil’s hand with a teasing smile and handed him back into bed like it was a carriage. Phil leaned up and pulled Clint down beside him, rolling over on his side to kiss Clint’s smile, to stroke his hands down Clint’s warm sleek flank.

“Can I open you up with my fingers?” he asked, letting his hand trail down over Clint’s hip.

“Fuck, please,” Clint said, pushing into Phil’s hand.

Phil reached over to the nightstand and slicked his fingers, pooling lube in his palm. “Can we do it like this?” he asked. “Facing each other? I want to see your face.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint said, slinging his top leg over Phil’s hip. “Here, can you reach?”

Phil could. Clint’s hole rippled under his slick fingers, and when Phil pushed inside Clint opened for him easily, letting out a soft whimpering sigh, his eyelids fluttering closed in pleasure. Phil brushed kisses over his face as he stretched him out, reveling in the little sounds he made. When he pushed his third finger inside, Clint groaned, pushing back into Phil’s hand.

“Fuck, baby, you’ve got magic hands,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever opened up that easy, but everything you do just feels amazing.”

“It’s the oxytocin, I think,” Phil said, but he could feel a smug smile trying to creep out at the corners of his mouth. He leaned in to nibble at the tendon of Clint’s neck and nudged at Clint with a fourth finger; when it slid in, Clint’s, “yes, yes, _Phil,_ ” rumbled under Phil’s lips.

Phil kissed his way up to Clint’s ear, each kiss matched with a gentle thrust with his fingers. “You like it?” he whispered, relishing the way Clint shivered around him. “Riding my hand like that, getting all stretched out and ready for my cock?”

“Fuck, you _know_ I do,” Clint said. He pulled with the leg he had slung over Phil’s waist, bringing their groins together. Phil’s breath skittered out of him in a long, broken gust as he felt Clint’s cock, burning hot and sticky with pre-come, so hard it must ache.

“God, Clint,” he panted. “That much?”

“I t-told you, magic fingers,” Clint said, biting lightly at Phil’s shoulder. “God. I feel like I could come from this and keep right on going.”

The idea ran down Phil’s spine like electricity. “Could you, you think?” He aimed his fingers a bit more deliberately, stroking Clint’s walls, feeling for—

“Yeah, yeah, there, _fuck_ ,” Clint said, hips bucking. Phil could see sweat glistening at the roots of his short-buzzed hair. “Do it, Phil, just like that.”

Phil brushed his lips over a mark he’d left on Clint’s neck the night before and sucked gently on it at the same time he pushed in hard, rubbing circles over Clint’s prostate. Clint went rigid, his arms locking tight around Phil, hands scrabbling at his skin; he gasped a few sobbing breaths, _ah ah ah,_ and then whined through his teeth and came, long throbbing pulses painting Phil’s belly with heat.

Phil stilled his hand, but left it inside Clint, marveling at feel of the aftershocks as Clint came down from his orgasm, all his muscles going lax, his face transcendent with bliss.

Phil nuzzled at his cheek, feeling silly and protective and tender, feeling like his heart was as swollen inside him as his cock. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Sooooo okay,” Clint slurred, turning his head to plant a sloppy kiss half on Phil’s cheek and half on his nose. “I’m a lucky bastard.”

“I feel like I’m the lucky one,” Phil said. “I’d think I dreamed you, only my subconscious isn’t that optimistic.” He shifted, his shoulder twinging a little. “I need to stretch my shoulder, you okay for me to move?”

“If you must,” Clint said, letting go with an exaggerated sigh.

Phil pulled his hand out carefully and wiped it on one of the towels, then sat up and stretched out his cramped limbs, arching his back until it popped. He was still hard—it’d be a surprise if he weren’t, with so much naked Clint pressed up against him—but some of the urgency had retreated, settling down into a warm curl of anticipation.

“Sorry,” Clint said. “I had you kinda crunched up there.”

“I loved it,” Phil said. “I’m just not as flexible as I used to be. I should probably start back on the yoga if I’m going to keep up with you.”

“You’re plenty flexible,” Clint said. “I’m like, freakishly double-jointed, plus I grew up with Russian acrobats. It’s not a good standard of comparison.” He rolled over onto his back, his side touching Phil’s thigh. His chiseled belly was streaked with come, almost all the way up to his soulmark, and it lit Phil up inside to see it.

He trailed his fingers through the mess and down over Clint’s spent cock, which twitched when he touched it. “You still want to try for another one before I fuck you?”

Clint arched in a full-body stretch, hands reaching above him, toes pointed, every muscle popping into gorgeous relief. “Mm, yeah, I think so,” he said. “If you start out kinda slow, you know? Coax it along.” He skated a hand idly over his own chest, rubbing a nipple and humming happily. “You could sit between my legs, maybe, get a better angle.” He pulled his feet up and apart, making space between his thighs. “You wanna?”

Phil really, really did. “Hand me that lube,” he said, and set the bottle next to Clint’s hip for ease of access before settling into place. He ended up sitting with his own legs stretched out to either side of Clint’s ass, nestled up along his sides, and Clint’s legs draped over his thighs.

“Gotcha right where I want ya,” Clint murmured, wrapping his legs around Phil’s torso and squeezing a little.

“I could say the same,” Phil said, and brushed his dry thumb barely over Clint’s balls, making him yelp and shiver.

“Tie,” Clint said, grinning. “Now get in there, babe.”

“The romance is gone,” Phil said, smiling at him like a dope as he coated his fingers in more lube. Clint would be more sensitive, now, and Phil didn’t want to hurt him. At least, not in a bad way. He pressed one slick finger inward gently, and it sank down to the base with no resistance at all, just a snug, hot caress of flexing muscle.

“Oh,” Clint sighed, his head tipping back into the stack of pillows he was propped on. “ _Yeah,_ Phil, just like that, god.”

Phil planted a kiss on Clint’s raised knee. “I want it to feel good,” he said. “Tell me if you get uncomfortable.”

Clint hummed an affirmative, pushing his hips back a little. Phil took the hint and started to move again, soft and slow, stroking Clint with one finger until he started to move restlessly, his thigh muscles quivering. 

“More?” 

“Yeah,” Clint sighed. His hands reached back to his chest again, drifting lightly over his nipples. “Yeah, gimme more.”

Phil added a bit more lube and came back with two fingers, moving them steadily in and out of Clint’s yielding body.

“So good,” Clint said, and Phil could see his cock trembling a little, starting to go plump and rosy again as Phil’s fingers grazed oh-so-lightly over the bump of Clint’s prostate. “Gimme another, Phil, c’mon, I’m good.”

“Whatever you want,” Phil said. He meant it to be light, teasing, but it came out sincere, and he felt his face heat.

“God, you’re perfect,” Clint said, “you—”and whatever he’d been going to say was lost in a long groan as Phil slid three fingers as far inside him as they would go. 

Phil worked him over with meticulous attention, watching the quiver of Clint’s muscles and the hitches in his breath to see when to go faster, to slow down, to stroke Clint’s prostate or to avoid it; he almost thought he could feel Clint’s pleasure, a distant echo in his own body. Phil’s cock throbbed with want, his balls drawn tight and aching, but that just added to the beauty of what he was doing, denying himself gratification now so that he could twist his hand just so, hear Clint let out a wavering cry as his cock jerked and hardened under the stimulation.

“That’s it, baby,” Phil said, and gathered some lube in his other hand, curling it loosely around Clint’s cock. “Just relax, let me do it, let me give this to you.” He started stroking Clint’s cock with a loose grip as he firmed up the pressure on his prostate, not too fast but moving steadily. He felt like he could live for a year off the way Clint’s hands were plucking at his own nipples, the way his face was tight with desire, the way his hips kept stuttering into Phil’s hands as he couldn’t keep still. He could feel Clint’s body tensing as he got closer and closer, but he didn’t vary his pace, making Clint wait and strain for the release that was just out of reach.

“Please,” Clint said, his voice gone thin and breathy. “Please, Phil, please let me, I need to,” and Phil shivered all over at the sound of him.

“I’ll give you what you need,” Phil promised. “I’ll never leave you hanging. Look at me.” Clint’s squinched-shut eyes opened, tears glittering in the corners, and Phil met them, letting all his joy and pride and triumph and helpless, overwhelming new love show in his face. “Feel it build, Clint,” he said, his own voice low and rough. “Feel it spreading through your body. You’re in my hands, I’ve got you, nothing in the world is more important.” He sped his strokes a little, tightened his fingers around Clint’s cock. “Watch me pull it out of you.”

Clint stared at him, eyes wide and stunned and bright, and he kept his eyes on Phil as he kept working him higher and higher, even as his body strained for its peak, a string of high-pitched, formless sounds falling from his mouth that made Phil want to hold him there forever so Phil could keep listening to them. Phil had never felt this in tune with any other lover, never known so clearly when his partner was about to come, but somehow he knew the exact moment when the pitch of Clint’s voice and the curl of his fingers into the bedding meant he was reaching the point of no return.

“Come for me,” Phil said, and clenched his hand tight around Clint’s cock, pushing down firmly on his prostate at the same time. 

Clint practically wailed out his pleasure, arching off the bed and then collapsing into a heap even as his cock was still dribbling out come over the back of Phil’s hand. Phil cradled him through it, massaging the last pulses out of him before laying Clint’s cock gently on his stomach and easing his fingers out of his body.

“Holy fuck, Phil,” Clint said, his gorgeous chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. “Holy _fuck._ ”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “You were incredible.”

Clint propped himself up on his elbows, peering down his body at Phil. “I think it’s your turn,” he said. “You must be dying of blue balls over there.”

“I can wait as long as I need to,” Phil assured him.

“Nope, no more waiting: I think you should fuck me.”

Phil blinked. “Right now?”

“Right the hell now,” Clint said. “Just… just put my legs over your shoulders and slide on in, you don’t even need anymore lube, I can feel myself dripping.”

“I thought you wanted to be on top?” Phil ran his hand down Clint’s thigh.

“Yeah, but right now I can’t feel my legs, so we can do that later.” Clint lifted his leg a few inches then let it flop down. “See? All noodley.”

“If you’re sure,” Phil said, a little doubtfully. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to—he couldn’t remember offhand anything he’d ever wanted to do with quite this level of focused intensity—but that Clint was still twitching, his cock and his hole pink and puffy with use. “You won’t be too sore?”

“If you wait five minutes, yeah,” Clint said. “But if you go right now, it’ll just be really intense. I’ll get to feel every fraction of an inch as you stuff that gorgeous cock up my ass.” He licked his lips, his eyes dark with arousal. “Please? I want it.”

Phil shifted, going to his knees between Clint’s thighs. He lifted Clint’s legs over his shoulders, Clint arching his back to help line them up. Phil had an amazing view of Clint’s gorgeous, come-smeared body, his flushed face and kiss-bitten lips and the sweat-damp spikes of his hair, Phil’s writing on his body marking their bond. Phil took his cock in hand and lined up, letting the head just brush Clint’s hole; he was still so wet and open that Phil could tell he’d offer next to no resistance.

“As you wish,” he told Clint.

“Nerd,” Clint said, grinning fondly, and then his mouth dropped open on a long “ _oh_ ,” as Phil pushed his hips forward and sank in and in and in, Clint’s wet slick heat on his naked cock better than anything he’d ever felt before.

Phil bit his lip, hands clenching on Clint’s thighs in an effort to keep control. Clint felt so good—astoundingly, impossibly good—hot and silky-snug, rippling around his cock in a way that brought Phil’s arousal roaring back to the forefront of his attention. He held on for dear life as Clint clenched around him, making happy little noises as he squeezed and shifted, like Phil’s cock was his new favorite toy and he wanted to find out exactly how it fit.

Which, well, wasn’t exactly untrue, really.

Finally, Phil managed to wrestle himself back from the brink. He opened his eyes—he hadn’t realized he had them closed—and saw Clint looking up at him with open, unguarded affection.

“We good?” Clint asked.

“Yeah, I—yeah,” Phil said. “Almost too good, for a minute there. You know I hadn’t—before last night, I mean, I hadn’t ever barebacked with anyone before you.”

“I do know, and it’s fuckin’ hot,” Clint said, his face gentle. “You’ve been waiting a long time, for this, darlin’, you just take what you need. You’ve made me all easy for you, now use me to feel good. I want you to feel so good inside me, Phil, I want you to love it.”

“I already love it,” Phil said, stroking over whatever part of Clint’s skin he could reach, turning to nuzzle the hairy leg currently slung over his shoulder. “Everything I do with you is the best thing I’ve ever done; I’m considering filing a report on you for being some kind of succubus.”

Clint laughed. “I’d be an incubus, thank you, and I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is one,” Phil assured him.

“Good.” Clint arched up, pushing Phil’s cock a half-inch deeper. “Now drain my life energies with amazing sex.” 

Phil felt like laughing, suddenly, not because it was that funny, but because he was so happy. He drew back slowly, letting himself enjoy the catch and drag of Clint’s rim down the length of his cock, and then started to fuck him in earnest.

“Yes, yes, fuck me,” Clint groaned, bracing his hands against the wall to push back into Phil’s thrusts. “Fuck, yeah, it’s so good, it feels so goddamn good, it, it’s like you’re jerking my cock from the inside.” 

Phil kept going, trying to keep at the same angle, watching flickers of discomfort and ecstasy chase each other over Clint’s face as Phil’s cock rubbed over and over his well-used prostate.

“Oh,” Clint said, after a few moments. “Oh, shit, I think—I think I can come again, it feels like—Phil, touch me please, touch me, I’m gonna come on your cock.”

Phil groaned deep in his chest, lust licking like fire at his nerves. He slicked his hand in the puddle of lube and come on Clint’s belly and took his cock in a firm hand. Clint wasn’t hard, but his cock was twitching with every stroke, fluid leaking from the head.

“I want you to do that,” he said, stroking Clint firmly and running his thumb around the head as he quickened his strokes, making Clint’s breathy cries go higher and higher-pitched, until he was nearly sobbing. “I want that, I want you to come again for me, come all around me, Clint, I want to feel you.”

Clint fell apart in slow motion, his soft cock dripping come in a long, steady stream as he let out a high breathy cry, his body clenching around Phil’s aching cock. That was all he needed, all he’d been waiting for: he let himself go, slamming into Clint’s body with the desperation of his long wait, and one-two-three-four thrusts into the lush grip of his spasming body was all Phil needed to tip over into an orgasm that felt like it turned him inside-out.

They were still for a moment, just looking at each other stunned and panting, when a loud banging on the wall beside them made them both jump.

“Oh shit,” Phil said, looking at the wall guiltily. “I forgot about Melinda.”

Clint’s mouth twitched, and then he chuckled, and then he and Phil were collapsing together into a filthy, sticky, giggling heap, sated and come-drunk and glowing with joy.

Eventually, they managed to bestir themselves to clean up and put on pants and throw all the besmirched towels in a heap in the corner, and then they fell on the food Vitya had left them like a pack of starving wolves. 

  


**_November 9, 2004, 6:28 pm_ **

“Can I ask you something?” Clint said. They were propped up on the bed, picking desultorily at the remains of the food but mostly just basking in their afterglow. Phil’s cheek was resting on Clint’s shoulder, just above his soulmark, and Clint was playing with Phil’s fingers, tracing his own writing on Phil’s skin. The mark tingled pleasantly when Clint touched it.

“Anything,” Phil said, pressing a kiss to Clint’s collarbone.

“December, 1992,” Clint said, and Phil froze.

“Ah.” Clint nodded, like a theory of his had been confirmed. “I’d wondered. So it happened to you, too? The mark going crazy?”

“It was my fault,” Phil confessed, his throat going tight at the memory of that terrible day. “I’m so sorry, Clint, I fucked up.”

“Hey, shh,” Clint said, tightening his hold around Phil’s shoulders and rubbing comfortably over his mark. “Babe, I’m not mad or nothing, I just wanted to know what happened. It seemed so random; just out of the blue one day, my mark started changing into all kinds of things, then it went back to what it had been and never budged again.”

Phil sighed. “I didn’t react well to the mark settling,” he admitted, not meeting Clint’s eyes. “I thought—I mean, it was stupid, I should have remembered that context is everything and soulmarks never have them, but I thought the second honeymoon thing meant I’d be married when I met you. And… I had always planned to wait to meet my soulmate before I even considered a serious relationship. I knew soulmates weren’t always like that, but if mine _was,_ I wanted it with them. So I just—I couldn’t figure out if it meant I’d give up, or break someone’s heart, or if maybe it meant someone was going to break mine, or if I’d go into it in bad faith...”

“Oh sweetheart,” Clint sighed. “Me and my big fat mouth. I’m sorry. I saw you there, falling almost literally at my feet, and all I could think was how hot you were and how much I wanted to be a total homewrecker and tell you that _I’d_ never throw you out of my bed, and I just opened my mouth and said something smartassed and, like, gave you soulmark angst in the past, or something.”

“I mean, it’s not like I did much better,” Phil said, tapping Clint’s mark. “I really didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

“Oh, so you weren’t trying to say you needed to meet me like you needed a hole in the head?” Clint laughed.

“I mean. Not _you_ ,” Phil tried to explain. “I just meant, it was complicated because of the mission.”

“I know that, Phil,” he said, kissing Phil’s temple. “I’m on a mission too, remember? I understand now. But we’re getting off topic.”

“Yeah.” Phil sighed. “I tried to change the mark,” he said. “I went to one of those soulmark consultants, and she suggested that since I had a mark that made it sound like I’d be married when I met you, I should marry someone else who had the same kind of soulmark. A marriage of convenience type of thing.”

“Huh,” Clint said, thoughtful. “So that made the mark change?”

“Not immediately,” Phil said. He stared down at his lap, fiddling with a fold of sheet. He didn’t want to meet Clint’s eyes while he told him this story. “Not till the day I went to get the license. I felt it start to change on my way home and I, I was happy. I thought it meant the plan was working.”

“Well,” Clint said. “It was, wasn’t it? I mean, the mark was changing, that’s what you wanted.”

“I never wanted it like that,” Phil said, holding Clint tighter. “The things it said—they were horrible. You were threatening to shoot me, or telling me someone was dead, or cursing me for killing someone, and the worst one—the worst—” he broke off, shuddering in remembered horror.

“You can tell me,” Clint said gently, tugging Phil half on top of him, wrapping him in warm, strong arms. “I won’t be mad at you.”

“It said ‘please let me die,’” Phil whispered. 

“Huh,” Clint said. “That’s weird.”

“It was _sickening_ ,” Phil snapped. “I thought I’d, I’d killed you before we even met—”

“No, hey, shh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Clint said, rubbing at Phil’s back. “Just… one of mine said that, too.”

Phil froze, his stomach flipping over. “Were yours all that way, too? God, did I put you through that for nothing? Were we going to meet over violence and death because I thought I knew better than—”

“Phil,” Clint interrupted him, his voice firm. “Stop. Think about it. We’re both law enforcement, right? We met on an op. We were probably always going to meet on an op. I was just getting ready to head to Quantico when it happened, and a lot of mine said stuff like ‘put your hands up,’ shit like that, so I just figured we’d meet through work somehow. And, yeah, maybe those meetings wouldn’t have gone well, maybe I’d have still been under and you’d have raided us or something, but that didn’t happen. It will _never_ happen, because apparently the best of all possible worlds is the one where we meet undercover on the fuckin’ David Hasselhoff cruise.” He laughed a little. “I mean, given my normal luck, that’s probably the best representation of my fated life path anyway.”

Phil sighed, finally going limp in Clint’s arms, finally feeling a little kernel of sour guilt dissolve and slip away. He kissed his mark, his words lying over Clint’s heart, and then a thought struck him, and he groaned. “Oh god, I just realized—that’s probably my fault, too.”

“No faults here,” Clint said. “But what do you mean?”

“After the marriage of convenience debacle, I decided that the best way to keep the ‘second honeymoon’ from meaning I was really on one was to pick that phrase up as a slang expression and use it all the time.”

“What, like, ‘me and Taco Tuesday are having a second honeymoon since Prilosec OTC came out’?” 

Phil chuckled. “More or less,” he said. “I’ve probably had a second honeymoon with every person, thing, and activity I encounter with any regularity since then. At first people thought it was weird but then they started picking it up. The whole reason Melinda was telling people this trip was our second honeymoon was to poke at me a little.”

“Well, whyever it happened,” Clint said, “I’m happy you decided to have a second honeymoon with David Hasselhoff and come here, because god, Phil, you… you’re awesome, okay? And I’m really looking forward to the life I’m gonna have that has you in it.”

“Oh,” Phil said, swallowing hard, humbled at how easily Clint seemed to find it to open his heart and let Phil inside. “Yes, I—Clint, I feel the same.”

“Good.” Clint kissed his hair, then suddenly yawned wide. “God, sorry. We should probably get some sleep, though.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. They turned out the lights and curled up facing each other in bed, limbs entwined, and traded soft kisses until they gradually drifted to sleep, their heads on the same pillow.

**_November 10, 2004, 7:15 am_ **

They woke the next morning to the sounds of activity in the hall outside, people slamming doors and chattering to each other as they prepared to go ashore in Barcelona. They smiled at each other in the faint light creeping in under the door, and then they were kissing again, and then they were shoving down pants and rubbing off together, pressed tight together from shoulder to knee and giving themselves over to heat and skin and pleasure.

“Well, that’s those sheets done,” Clint said, when their breathing had slowed again and the slick mess between their bellies was starting to cool. “Shower together?”

“They’re hardly big enough for one, let alone two,” Phil said. “But I’m game to try.”

They crammed themselves into the tiny cubicle somehow, and what had just been annoying before was suddenly fine; the cramped quarters and low water pressure just meant they had to touch more, had to wash bits of one another, had to come together soapy-slick and kiss a while just for the beauty of doing it. They went through their whole morning routines together, moving around each other like they’d been doing it forever. Once clean and dressed, Phil pulled out his laptop to check in with Melinda.

“She’s made a lot of progress,” he told Clint. “Jeffries moved in on her like you said he would—”

“Asshole,” Clint muttered.

“Agreed, but good for our purposes,” Phil said. “She’s agreed to go with him to Barcelona today; she hopes she can get the intel we need by the end of the day and we can wrap this up by Marseille.”

“Cool,” Clint said. “I—oh! Shit, I forgot. My best friend Nat is in Spain right now, we were going to get together for lunch today. I hadn’t even thought of it, with the bonding and all, but. Um. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in meeting her?”

Phil looked at him closely. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, biting his lip a little, nervous; he apparently wanted Phil to meet his friend very much. Phil considered this, picturing another person greeting Clint, maybe hugging him, but the flare of possessiveness and rage the thought would have triggered the day before was banked down to a sort of surly petulance. 

“I think the bond’s mostly settled,” he said, and as he said it he could feel it, a humming warmth in the back of Phil’s brain. “I’d like to meet her.”

“She’s gonna lose her shit,” Clint said. “She’ll be so happy I met you at last; I may have, um, talked to her a lot about how long it was taking, she’s pretty tired of it. Plus, that way we can be close by if your partner needs backup.” He sniffed. “Also, I think it’s probably good to let the room air out some before we come back.”

Phil glanced at the laundry pile and the rumpled, stained bed. “Probably,” he agreed.

“Well then,” Clint said. “Let’s go to Barcelona.”

Phil took his hand and pulled him in close. “Just… before we go,” he said, and kissed Clint again, long and luxurious and tender. When they parted, they stayed cheek to cheek, holding each other for a fortifying few last minutes before going out into the world again.

“It’s a good thing we’re soulmates,” Clint said, lipping at the edge of Phil’s jaw. “‘Cause I think you’ve spoiled me for anyone else forever.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, kissing him again, then again, aching with joy. “Good thing.”


	6. Barcelona, Spain, 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone goes ashore in Barcelona.
> 
> Everyone.

  


**_November 10, 2004, 11:02 am_ **

“You guys are gonna love one another,” Clint said, bouncing a little as they walked down the sunny street toward Las Ramblas, where Clint had arranged to meet his friend. “I mean, you’ve got so much in common! You’re both smart and funny and badass and—oh! Did I tell you, when we met I thought Nat was gonna be my soulmate for like three seconds, because the first thing she said to me was exactly the same thing you did? But it was just a coincidence, she’s got other shit going on, it’s complicated. But isn’t that funny?”

Phil shoved down a surge of completely inappropriate jealousy that he was mostly sure was down to the bonding hormones. “Hah, yeah,” he said. “Crazy.”

Clint looked at him sharply. “What’s—oh. I said that wrong.” He stopped walking and tugged Phil a little closer with their joined hands. “Hey. Phil. Me and Nat, we aren’t like that, okay? Well, okay, we did use to sleep together sometimes, but like, in a friends with benefits way, not like in a true-love way. I mean I do love her, obviously, but not—ugh.” He dropped Phil’s hand to run both his hands through his hair. “She’s my best friend, and we’ve known each other for a long time, and she’s basically the sister I never had. And she is going to love you because you are my soulmate and you make me happy. Okay?”

Phil stepped close and rested a hand on Clint’s chest, feeling his heart beating beneath Phil’s hand and Phil’s words. “Okay,” he said. “I promise, I’ll try not to be weird when I meet her. I’m just nervous, mostly,” he said, realizing even as he said it that it was true. “She’s important to you, so I want to make a good impression, but also I’m still a little bond-crazy and it’s making me want to detour straight to the Barcelona airport and kidnap you back home with me and hide you in my apartment for a year.”

Clint pulled him forward into a hug and brushed a kiss along his cheekbone. “Not gonna lie, that sounds like a great idea,” he said. “But we both know we aren’t gonna do that.”

“Yeah,” Phil sighed, taking comfort in the warm circle of Clint’s arms. “I know.”

They pulled apart reluctantly and continued down the street hand-in-hand.

“Remember,” Clint said quietly as they approached the restaurant, “she knows I’m undercover, and the place we’re meeting is a big tourist spot, so just… go along with whatever she says, okay? We’ll fill her in when we get somewhere safe to talk.”

Phil nodded, his shoulders curving in a little and his stride shortening as he pulled himself back into Peter Clark. Clint changed, too, his graceful walk turning into a swagger, his chest puffing out, and he slipped his hand out of Phil’s to stick it possessively into Phil’s back jeans pocket.

“Ty ne takoj smešnoj, kak ty dumaeš’,” Phil told him. _You’re not as funny as you think you are._

Clint—no, that expression was Lyosha—smirked at him. “I think I am, Petya,” he said, his Russian accent back in place, seamless if Phil hadn’t known the truth.

They made their way onto Las Ramblas. It was packed with tourists, many of them familiar faces from the cruise; Phil noticed a few people looking at them, nudging companions and whispering, no doubt recalling the Great David Hasselhoff Meet And Greet Fan Brunch Incident that had apparently already become legend. He let himself shrink a little more into the lee of Clint’s arm, keeping a watch in the crowds for anything untoward.

“Ah!” Clint said, after a moment. “There.” He nodded at a small crowd gathered around a street musician, listening to what seemed to be a translated version of “Wonderwall,” done in flamenco style.

“Natashenka!” he called as they approached.

A slightly-built woman, wearing a light trench coat and a scarf over her hair, turned to face them. She pulled off her massive, old-fashioned sunglasses, revealing a face as flawlessly lovely as a pre-Raphaelite painting. “Lyoshka!” she exclaimed, pulling off her scarf and shaking out a cloud of red ringlets. At least five people around her turned to stare; it was rude, but Phil understood the impulse. She ran up to Clint and kissed him on either cheek, her scarlet lipstick somehow not leaving a smudge. She tucked her hand into the crook of his free arm. “What took you so long, _tovarisč?_ ” 

Phil felt his jaw dropping open at this near-perfect re-creation of his fervid youthful imagination, and shot a betrayed look at Clint, who didn’t seem to notice.

“Cousin, I have such good news,” he was saying, looking excitedly down into her upturned face. “I have met my soulmate at last. This is Peter Clark. Petya, this is—” he glanced at her.

“Natalia Ivanovna Pautina,” she said. “A pleasure to meet you.” Her accent was distinct and flawlessly authentic, and if Phil hadn’t been listening to Clint put his Russian off and on like a coat for the last two days, he wouldn’t have questioned it; as it was, Phil wondered. How many faux Russians could one mission contain before things strained the bounds of probability?

“Vy i në prëdstavljaëtë, kak ja rada s vami poznakomit’sja, Natalia Ivanovna,” Phil replied, with his best “meeting the VIPs” manners. _You have no idea how delighted I am to meet you._ “Moj dorogaj Lyoshka tak vysoko o vas otzyvalsja.” _My dearest Lyoshka has spoken so highly of you._

“Cut it out, you two,” Clint muttered, his lips barely moving. “We can sniff each other’s butts later.” He raised his voice back to normal volume. “We must go somewhere to talk! I think you said you knew a cafe?”

“Yes, yes, this way,” she said, and led them off down a maze of side streets, until they were away from the touristy part of town. “There,” she said, nodding at a shabby little cafe on the corner that was already doing a bustling business, if the crowded patio was any sign.

As soon as they walked in, Natalia was greeted with enthusiasm, and they were ushered to a table in a corner, conveniently positioned with a good view of the doors and windows and a clear path to the back door. Almost as soon as they sat down, a waiter appeared, put down an assortment of tapas and carafes of water and wine, and disappeared again. Natalia lifted a finger slightly, glancing around them with sharp green eyes, and then nodded.

“Do you see anyone you recognize, Lyosha?” she asked.

“No, we’re clear,” Clint said quietly, in his normal voice.

“Good,” she said, and by this point Phil wasn’t even surprised when her own Russian disappeared as well, leaving behind a smoothly generic newscaster’s American accent. “All right, then, tell me what’s happened. Who’s your friend, really?” She eyed Phil. “Interpol? NATO?”

“NATO?” Phil said, giving her a mildly affronted look. “Seriously? That’s hurtful.” 

Clint snickered, shooting Phil a look so openly fond that he couldn’t help but smile dopily back, ruffled feathers smoothed.

“Oh my god,” Natalia said, looking back and forth between them with wide eyes. “Seriously? He’s really—”

“Yeah,” Clint said, beaming. “This is Phil. He’s undercover too—SHIELD, can you believe it?—and he’s my soulmate. Really.” He unzipped his track jacket and tugged the v-neck of his t-shirt aside, revealing the top of his revealed soulmark. Phil unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve a few turns, turning his arm so she could see the loops of Clint’s writing on his skin.

Her hand reached out for a moment as though she would touch, then she pulled it back, clearing her throat. “Well,” she said, a little stiff. “Congratulations, both of you.” 

There was something vulnerable in her face as she looked between them, a bittersweet shadow in the way she watched Clint smile down at Phil’s arm and reach out to hold his hand, and it hit Phil like a chunk of falling debris: Natalia was _worried._ For all Phil’s concerns, earlier, it had somehow never even occurred to him that Clint’s Nat might be feeling the same way he was. Phil was the interloper, true, but he was Clint’s soulmate. Everyone knew somebody who had met their match and then slow-faded all their friends; it wasn’t pretty, but it happened. And Nat was Clint’s ex-lover, even if platonic; for all she knew, Phil might be one of those jealous men who didn’t like to be reminded that their soulmates even had a life before they heard their words.

He wasn’t. But she had no way of knowing that, yet.

“You know, I’m a little nervous about meeting you,” Phil said, not trying to hide the tension in his voice anymore. She looked up, her eyes widening, and Phil gave her a wobbly half-smile. “Clint was so excited to introduce us; I know you’re really important to him. Plus, well, aside from Vitya, you’re the first member of his family I’ve gotten to meet.” He shrugged, self-deprecating. “It’s hard to make a good impression when you’re trying to maintain opsec at the same time.”

“That’s true,” she said, her expression relaxing a little. “Still, at least you appreciate the difficulty. Imagine if you’d really been Peter Clark.”

Phil nodded, his face twisting a bit at the thought. If he’d really been Peter Clark, he wouldn’t have _deserved_ Clint, though possibly he would have deserved Alexsei Sokolov. It wasn’t a comfortable image.

“I just wanted to say,” he told Natalia, “I know my bond with Clint is new, and he and I have a lot of details to work out, still. But I want to assure you that if I had designed my soulmate from the ground up, exactly to my taste, that person still wouldn’t have been as amazing as Clint is. And I am completely committed to, to building a life with him, to sharing his life, and that includes all the people he loves. So I hope that you and I can get to know each other, and maybe be friends someday, because we’ve got Clint in common, and I think we both agree that he is…” he looked over at Clint, who was looking at him with soft surprise breaking over his face, his eyes shiny with unshed tears. “He’s really something special,” Phil finished. “Someone amazing. And I look forward to every hour we’ll be given to be together.” He looked down, his face hot. “So, um. Hi. It’s really good to meet you.”

“Oh,” Natalia said, her voice gone soft. “Yes. I see it now; you’re every bit as absurdly romantic as he is.” Phil looked up, and saw her lift her hand to Clint’s face, brushing away an escaped tear. “Congratulations,” she told him, and this time she sounded like she really meant it.

Phil was opening his mouth to keep the conversation going when he was interrupted by a shrill electronic rendition of “Suspicious Minds.” He froze for a second, then hurriedly pulled his cell phone from his pocket: that was the emergency tone; this was Melinda letting him know something had gone wrong.

“Hello?” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral in case anyone on her end could hear.

“Cindy, good morning!” Melinda said, her voice full of false cheer. 

“Are you in immediate danger?” Phil said crisply, assured from the coded greeting that nobody could hear his side of the conversation.

“Oh, yes, we’ve got lots of that here today,” Melinda said. “We decided to go to the Picasso museum, but there are so many crowds you can hardly see the paintings, I think we only managed to get to about twenty of the exhibits the whole time we were here.”

Twenty attackers, Phil translated, nearby but not yet moving on them, using bystanders as cover. Shit.

“What’s their objective?”

“I know!” Melinda said, laughing a little. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they, I swear if I could I’d want to take one home with me and lock it up in my house forever.”

Kidnapping, then. Phil relaxed a fraction. “Is it the Russians?”

“Oh, yes, I think so,” Melinda said. “I’ve seen a lot of old friends there, you know how it is.”

“Activate your panic beacon,” Phil told her, “I’ll get backup and come after you.”

“Of course I did, you know how I feel,” she said. “Oh, Cindy, my date needs me, I’m going to have to let you go. We should get together soon!”

“As soon as I can, I promise,” Phil said.

“Great!” She made a sharp noise, some kind of cut-off exclamation. “Oh, Cindy, you’ll never guess who just walked in. David Hasselhoff!”

“Oh god,” Phil groaned. “Really?”

“I know! The real David Hasselhoff! It’s so exciting. Ooh, I think he’s coming over this way, gotta go! Bye!”

Phil lowered the phone, feeling his entire body humming into high gear, a spike of adrenaline clearing everything else from his mind. Clint and Natalia were looking at him, concerned and alert.

“Melinda and Jeffries are about to be abducted from the Picasso Museum,” he said, dropping automatically into briefing mode. “Melinda says she recognizes some of the Russians, but there are about twenty in the group, and they’re using the tourists in the museum as cover. Also, Hasselhoff is on the scene.”

“She won’t be able to fight without risking Jeffries, the museum, and every bystander in the place—and odds are, Hasselhoff will be drawing a crowd just by being there,” Clint said. “Shit. They must have gotten wind somehow that she was close to flipping Jeffries. Goddammit.”

“She’s got a beacon,” Phil said. “It’ll transmit for a week; if we stay within about ten miles, we’ll be able to track her with the receiver in my phone. The trouble is, we don’t know where they plan on taking them and what they want to do.”

Clint and Natalia exchanged looks. “If Ivankov’s made them, we don’t want to leave Melinda with them for long, case be damned,” Clint said. “He’s a fucking psycho; we’ve seen him do some fucked up shit to people he thinks betrayed him. Your best bet is to get them away from his guys before they manage to get wherever they’re going.”

“Fuck,” Phil swore. “My team’s all in Italy, we weren’t expecting anything to go down until the end of the cruise. They’re at least ninety minutes away if they’ve got aircraft; if they don’t, we’re looking at a few hours. If we can keep the trail, maybe—”

“Phil,” Clint said. “We can do it ourselves, we don’t have to wait.”

Phil looked at him dubiously. “Melinda’s message said at least twenty,” he said. “Even if we’re able to get her free right off, that’s still only the three of us, one in unknown condition and two who had to infiltrate, against twenty fighters who’ll be coming in fresh.”

“Four of us,” Clint said.

“What?”

“He means I’ll help you,” Natalia said.

Phil blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Are you FBI as well? That would help, but even so—”

She and Clint both dissolved into laughter, Clint’s raspy and warm, hers like ringing crystal.

“…what did I say.”

“I, ah, I was going to try to work up to this,” Clint said. “I mean, it’s not bad—I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s good—but I need you to trust me and not freak out, okay?”

“O…kay,” Phil said. 

“So, um, Nat is… her name isn’t…when we first met, we…” Clint trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What he’s trying to say is that I’m the Black Widow,” Natalia said, her body braced as though expecting an attack. “If you are really SHIELD, you’ll know that name, I think.”

“I was getting there, geez,” Clint said, petulant.

Phil opened his mouth to speak, then realized he had no idea what he was going to say. After the last two days—meeting his soulmate, finding out his soulmate was a mobster, finding out his soulmate _wasn’t_ a mobster, getting David Hasselhoff’s drink thrown in his face—he couldn’t even muster much shock over learning that his soulmate’s best friend was the legendary international mercenary that every senior agent at SHIELD had been engaged in a years-long unofficial race to contact and recruit. It was as though he’d already reached his maximum capacity for surprise for the week, and anything else would just be another drop in the sea.

Honestly, the most prominent thought in his head just then was a rather petty gloating that he was going to get to wrap two missions at once, right under Blake’s nose, and meet his soulmate to boot. 

“Phil?” Clint was looking at him, worried.

Phil shook himself out of his daze, and then straightened, pulling his professionalism over what he was pretty sure was quite an unimpressive expression, and thought about the mission. An FBI hostage rescue sniper, Phil himself, and the Black Widow? Now _that_ sounded like a pretty even match-up against twenty Russian mobsters. “It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” Phil said, turning to Natalia. “I’m Agent Phillip Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, and as soon as we’re done here, I’m authorized to offer you a job.”

“Huh,” she said, eyeing him sharply. “I was under the impression that SHIELD had me under a kill order.” 

“Not for several years,” Phil said. “The Director received intelligence that you might be amenable to recruitment, and your target list has been in alignment with SHIELD’s operational objectives for some time.”

She looked him up and down, and then nodded, as though coming to some internal conclusion. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” she said. She picked up her scarf and twisted her hair back up into it with deft, purposeful movements, then grinned at him, the haughty chill of her previous formality evaporated like mist. “But you can call me Natasha.” She slid her sunglasses back on and cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Phil,” Phil said, smiling back at her. “Now let’s go wrap this up so we can talk recruitment.”

“I’ve got weapons in my hotel room,” Nat—Natasha—said. “Yes, Clint, that includes yours.”

“This,” said Clint, rubbing his hands together in glee, “is gonna be _so epic._ ”

  


**_November 10, 2004, 12:19 pm_ **

“You know,” Phil said, shrugging on a bulletproof vest, “when Natasha said she had your weapons, I thought she meant a sniper rifle.”

Natasha looked up, startled. “He doesn’t know?”

“We only met like thirty-six hours ago,” Clint said. “And a lot of that was—”

Phil cleared his throat.

“—not spent talking,” Clint finished. “We’ve still got a lot of backstory to fill in.” He looked over at Phil over the quiver of arrows—actual Robin Hood, Legolas arrows, with feathers on the ends—that he was inspecting. “It’s a long story, but short version: one of the things I did in the circus was an archery trick shooting show, and I’m still better with the bow than any other weapon. It doesn’t have the range of a rifle, but it’s a hell of a lot quieter; great for infiltration work. Plus, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve with the arrows that you can’t do with a bullet.” He pulled one from the quiver and held it up. The arrowhead, rather than being, well, arrow-shaped, was a sort of elongated capsule. “Knockout gas.” Another one. “Grappling hook.” Another. “Boomerang arrow.”

“Wait,” Phil said. “What’s a boomerang arrow?”

“It comes back to you after you shoot it,” Clint explained, looking a little defensive.

“That is so cool,” Phil told him.

“This soulmate thing makes more and more sense all the time,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. “Phil, come pick a sidearm.”

Phil went, looking at a beautiful assortment of pistols. “Do you have any hand grenades?” He picked up a Smith & Wesson MP, a duplicate of his standard duty weapon when he wasn’t undercover, and tested the balance; it felt good.

She smiled at him approvingly. “I think we can make that happen.”

A phone rang, and he and Natasha both looked up; Clint pulled a slim flip phone out of a hidden pocket, frowning. “It’s Vitya,” he said, flipping it open. “Hello?” His forehead creased as he listened for a moment. “Hang on, Vitya, I’m putting you on speaker, Nat and Phil are with me,” he said, hitting a button. “Okay, go ahead.” 

“We are in the shit,” Vitya said, his accent thicker than Phil had ever heard it. “I heard Jennifer on phone, bro. She pissed because Tyler, he was talking like maybe he don’t need to cooperate no more with Ivankov, like maybe he should get out, keep money. She thinks it Melanie, making him change his mind. She sent Pavel and Dmitri to meet some more of Ivankov’s bros, they gonna take Tyler and Melanie to meet her out in the country. That won’t be good meeting, bro.”

“Shit,” Clint said. “Vitya, Mel tipped us off just before they got to her; they kidnapped her, Tyler, and probably David Hasselhoff from the Picasso Museum about twenty minutes ago. We’re gearing up to head after her; she’s got a tracker but it’s only short range.”

“Even Hasselhoff, bro? Ugh.” Vitya made a disdainful sound. “They got no respect for art.”

Phil met Natasha’s eyes, then quickly looked back down at the stash of knives he was picking through so he didn’t burst into undignified laughter.

“I heard where Jennifer is meeting them,” Vitya continued. “Farm, out about forty kilometers from city. I have address.”

“Where is it?”

“Tell me where you are, I meet you,” Vitya said. “You need more people for these bros, Lyosha. They bad news.”

Clint paused a moment, then sighed. “If you want to come, I won’t stop you,” he said. “I’m texting you the address of the hotel, get here as fast as you can.”

“I be there. Five, ten minute,” Vitya said. “Melanie is nice lady, she don’t deserve this shit.” He hung up, and Clint closed the flip phone slowly.

“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s twenty to five, now.”

  


**_November 10, 2004, 5:43 pm_ **

“I never realized corn was so explosive,” Phil said, looking at the plume of fire towering into the sky. 

“I did,” Clint said grimly. “Course, I grew up in Iowa, so.”

“I like your soulmate, Phil,” Melinda said, looking up from where she was applying butterfly bandages to a slice in her calf. She looked remarkably unruffled for someone who’d been tied up in a barn until a half hour ago.

“Yeah,” Phil said, grinning at her sappily. “Isn’t he great?”

“ _You’re_ great,” Clint said, leaning over to pick a stray piece of hay out of Phil’s hair. “I swear to god, when you jumped down out of the hayloft and clotheslined those dudes, I thought I was gonna come a little.”

 _“Bro,_ gross, _”_ said Dimitri Kuzmenko, from where he was hogtied in the dirt. “Too much information.”

“Shut up,” Natasha said, kicking him in the leg. “I think it’s sweet.”

“You would,” Unidentified Tracksuit Bro Number Five said, craning his neck to glare at her around his own bonds. “Crazy bitch.”

“There’s no need to use gendered slurs,” Phil told him. 

“You said it,” Jennifer Jeffries—who was responsible for Melinda’s stab wound—said. “You’ve always been a sexist fuck, Ivan.”

“I don’t think you have much room to talk,” Melinda told her, “considering the names you called me earlier. After I was kidnapped by the Russian mob at your instigation.”

“That’s different,” Jennifer spat. “That was _personal._ Tyler finally got off his ass and started doing something useful, and you were talking him into giving it all up! And for what? So he can predict exact change in some dead-end job in the middle of nowhere?”

“More like ‘so he’ll stop helping fund Mikhail Ivankov’s gang war,’” Clint said.

“Uncle Misha will do better with that territory than anyone else would,” she said sulkily. “Tyler could have gone into the family business!”

“Good when family is bakers,” Vitya said, handing Melinda another bandage. “Run tea room, maybe. Not good when family hurt people, bro.”

In the distance, a warehouse burst into flame.

“Aw, olives,” Clint said plaintively. “No.”

“I saved you some,” Phil said, pulling a plastic bag out of his pocket. “I saw how much you liked them while we were hiding in there, so.”

Clint leaned over the bound form of Unidentified Tracksuit Bro Number Eleven, who was currently unconscious, and kissed Phil enthusiastically. “Best. Soulmate. Ever,” he declared.

Melinda sighed. “Blake needs to hurry up,” she said. “I need a break from the two of you until you finish bonding. There are some things I just don’t need to see.”

“They may not change much,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “Clint’s pretty demonstrative.”

“Hey, I can tone it down when I need to,” Clint said. “Just, not right now. I’ve got, like, hormones and shit.”

“I have every faith in your professionalism, sweetheart,” Phil told him, getting lost in his eyes again a little. Stripped down to an undershirt and the armored vest Natasha had produced from her hotel room, with a bow and quiver of arrows—of all outlandish things—strapped to his back, he was lavishly, absurdly beautiful, like something Phil had made up, if Phil had ever been quite that lustfully imaginative. The flickering light of the burning grain silo traced the muscles in his arms with gold, and he ran his finger absently over the cut of Clint’s bicep.

“Maybe I’ll go check on Jeffries,” Melinda said, waving her arm at the outbuilding where they’d left Tyler to watch over David Hasselhoff, who was sleeping off a punch to the head he’d sustained when he tried to help them with the rescue. “We don’t want him to change his mind about cooperating after all this trouble.”

“He did take it pretty personally when he found out you were a spy,” Phil said.

Natasha laughed at them, then gestured at the red-orange blur on Melinda’s leg, exposed by the first aid. “That’ll be you someday,” she said, “and I’m sure you’ll be every bit as bad as they are. I’ve seen it happen a million times.”

“I won’t,” Melinda said grumpily, “and neither would you, I bet.”

Natasha’s eyes went distant, her hand moving to a spot low on her belly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “The most surprising things can take one off-guard sometimes. Ah! Is that one of yours, or should we be arming ourselves again?”

Clint squinted up into the sky. “It’s not a chopper,” he said. “Looks military… oh, it’s one of your little VTOL numbers,” he said, turning to Phil. “Those things are sweet.”

A quinjet. “It’s about time,” Phil said. “I’m dying for a shower; I smell like wine and pig shit.”

“Only a little,” Clint said generously.

They watched as the quinjet settled daintily in the pasture and opened its hatch. A swarm of people in SHIELD’s navy tactical gear came out, guns at the ready, and then staggered uneasily to a halt as they took in the bound mobsters, the five of them, and the raging agriculture fire in the background.

“Goddammit, Coulson,” Agent Blake said, pulling off his goggles. “I send you on a fucking David Hasselhoff cruise and you end up breaking half of Catalonia, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I think you’ll find this farm’s only about fifty acres,” Phil told him mildly. “I doubt that’s even one percent of Catalonia.” 

Clint snickered. Melinda rolled her eyes.

There was some commotion inside the quinjet, and a few more people started down the gangplank; one of them shouldered his way through the agents and rushed up to Melinda, reaching out as though he wanted to touch her, but visibly pulling his hands back.

“Oh my god, Agent May, you’re wounded! Are you all right?” he demanded.

Melinda jumped, then stared up at him as though he’d just started to tap-dance. “…Dr. Garner?” she said, bewildered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He jerked as if struck, and reached out toward her. “It’s you,” he said softly, his eyes widening. “It’s _you_.”

“Fuck,” she said, her voice gone high and lost. “Oh, fuck,” and she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her head in his chest. Peeking out from the bandages on her leg, Phil could see her flame-colored soulmark coalescing, shaping itself into words.

“Wow,” Clint said. “Her too?”

“I guess so,” Phil said. “Huh. You know, I think he was at the briefing we had at the start of this mission? No wonder we were both so—”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “No wonder.” He sounded a little relieved, and Phil could hardly blame him; Clint hadn’t exactly met Melinda on her best day.

There was a brief pause while everyone pretended not to notice Melinda and Dr. Garner whispering to each other while he periodically laid helpless, tiny kisses on her ash-smeared hair. 

“So,” Clint said at last. “Do you think it was the water on the cruise ship, or is there just something about David Hasselhoff’s music that makes people find their soulmates?”

“I hate you,” Phil told him. That concert would haunt his nightmares, he was sure.

“No you don’t,” Clint said, stealing a kiss and nipping at Phil’s bottom lip a little on the way back from it.

“You’re right,” Phil said, taking Clint’s hand and twining their fingers together. “It’s the opposite of that.”

“Aw, Phil.” Clint leaned his head on Phil’s shoulder. “I opposite-of-hate you, too.”

Someone cleared their throat loudly, and Phil looked up to see a stocky redheaded guy that seemed kind of familiar but that he was pretty sure he didn’t know, and—

“Director Fury,” he said.

“Barney?” Clint said at the same time, then, “Holy shit, _Marcus?_ ”

“Wait, Barney your brother Barney?” Phil asked, then, “Who’s Marcus?”

“I am,” Director Fury said. “Or I was, that time in Venezuela.” He tapped his scarred cheek significantly. “Could have gone a lot worse for me, if I hadn’t gotten spotted by someone who valued saving people more than following the SOP.” He nodded at Clint. “It’s good to see you in the flesh again, Hawkeye.”

“You’re _Hawkeye?_ ” Phil demanded, whirling to face Clint. The mysterious agent who’d saved Nick—which Phil had been low-key resentful over for the last twelve years—was _Clint?_

“Uh, yeah?” Clint said. 

“I thought you were with Interpol!”

“I’ve been detailed to them a few times,” Clint said. “Special skills and all. You look upset, Phil, is something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Phil said. “My life is a badly-written movie, but it’s fine. You realize I was in Maracay that day too, right?”

“If you’d stayed at the safehouse with me when I asked, you punk, you’d have met Coulson here in 1992,” Fury said, punching Clint companionably in the shoulder. 

“Wow,” Clint said, sounding bewildered. “I—I don’t even know what to say.”

“Well, I for one am glad you didn’t soulbond in 1992,” the redheaded man—Barney?—said, “seeing as how you were at least three times more reckless then. Judging from the condition of this place, the two of you might have, I dunno, blown up Vancouver or something by now.”

“…you might have a point,” Clint admitted, then he stepped forward, engulfing him in a hug. “Christ, it’s great to see you, Barn,” he said. He held out his hand for Phil, then pulled him close, still hanging on to his brother—the resemblance was really quite pronounced when they stood next to each other—with his other arm. “Barney,” he said, his face practically glowing. “This is my soulmate, Phil Coulson. Phil, this is my brother Barney.”

“It’s great to meet you,” Phil said, and then let out a little _oof_ as Barney pulled him and Clint both into an enthusiastic, three-way hug. 

“Welcome to the family, Phil,” he said. “My kids are gonna be so excited to finally have another uncle.”

“I… I don’t have a lot of experience with kids,” Phil said. “But I’ll do my best.”

“They’re easy,” Clint promised him with a soft smile. “All you gotta do is love ‘em, really. Bring some presents and play with ‘em a little and listen when they talk, you’ll be golden. They’re gonna love you.”

“So, not to interrupt the family reunion, Agents Barton,” Fury said. “But I do need to debrief a little.” He nodded at Natasha. “I’m Director Fury of SHIELD, ma’am,” he said. “I take it from the fact that you aren’t currently tied up that you’re an ally in this venture?”

“Oh,” Phil said, delight bubbling up in his chest. “Sir.” He looked at Natasha imploringly, and she rolled her eyes and nodded. “Please allow me to introduce Ms. Natalia Alianovna Romanova, who assisted us in the rescue op. You’re familiar with her work, of course, under the code name Black Widow.”

Fury’s eyebrow shot skyward, and he looked actually surprised for a moment before barking out a laugh. “Only you, Coulson,” he said, grinning. “I swear to god.” He turned to Clint. “Another friend of yours?”

“I got a lot of friends,” Clint said. Barney rolled his eyes.

“Of course you do.” Fury looked around at the scene, deep satisfaction in every line of his posture. “So. Now that your cover is as burned as that grain silo and you’ve soulmated Coulson, here, can I _finally_ convince you to come work for me?”

Clint looked over at Phil and grinned. “Can I learn to fly one of those jets?”

“You’ll learn to fly everything we’ve got,” Fury said.

“Can I use the bow in the field?”

“We’ll customize one for you.”

“And I can work with Phil?”

“It’s SOP for soulmates who are both field-qualified.”

“And you’ll help Barney make sure Uncle Vitya is okay? He’s actually related to some of those shits, I don’t want them to make trouble for him.”

Fury nodded. “We’ll figure something out, Barton, I promise.”

“Then, yeah,” Clint said. “Okay, sure. Sounds good.”

Barney sighed. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he told Phil. “I think the only reason he stuck it out with us this long was that he thought you were Russian.”

“That’s a funny story,” Phil said. “We’ll fill you in later.”

Fury turned to Natasha. “I don’t know if Agent Coulson had time to mention it, Ms. Romanova,” he said, “But SHIELD has a recruitment packet prepared that we’ve been trying to deliver for quite some time.”

“He did mention something of the sort,” Natasha said. “However, I’ve been independent for a long time, Director Fury.”

Clint turned toward her, his eyes wide and pleading. “Nat,” he said.

She looked at him for a long moment, her face still, then sighed. “Oh, fine,” she said. “Yes, I’ll come with you. God knows you two need someone to keep you from getting lost in each other’s eyes and falling down the stairs to break your necks, and Coulson promised me that scone recipe anyway.”

“Excellent,” Fury said, clapping his hands once. “You know, Coulson, I knew from the moment I met you that you’d bring me good luck. You’re promoted, effective immediately; welcome to Level Six. I’ll be wanting you to take over the new Strike Team Delta.” He waved an arm at Clint and Natasha. “Meet your specialists, Hawkeye and the Black Widow.”

“Oh my god,” Blake said, “this is going to be a disaster.”

Phil grinned. “Welcome aboard, specialists,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“Um, excuse me?” 

They all turned around, to see David Hasselhoff limping towards them, leaning heavily on a sheepish-looking Tyler Jeffries.

Fury looked at Phil. “You are fucking with me.”

Phil shrugged. “Things got a little out of hand,” he said. Behind him, he could hear Blake swearing.

“Hi,” David Hasselhoff said. “Um. I don’t suppose you could help me? I need to get back to my cruise, I’m supposed to be in Marseille—” he broke off, peering and Clint and Phil. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” Phil lied, keeping his blandest face on.

“Oh. Well. Anyway,” David Hasselhoff said. “About that ship? I really need to get back there. This is really inconvenient, you know? I mean, I’ve been kidnapped before—they really love me in Germany—but usually they just want me to go sing karaoke or something and they give me a ride back when we’re done.”

Fury took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. 

“Agent Blake,” he said. “Can you please come over here and debrief David Hasselhoff?”

Blake’s groan was like music, and Clint’s face was like dawn breaking. Phil slipped his hand into Clint’s back pocket and smiled at him, letting his face look exactly as silly and happy and euphoric as he was feeling.

The rest of their lives were going to be amazing.

**_December 2, 2005_ **

“So,” Phil said, stretching his well-used muscles luxuriously.

“So,” Clint repeated, tracing his finger through the mess on Phil’s belly. “So what?”

“The whole family’s going to be at Barney and Laura’s place for Christmas,” Phil said. “So I was thinking maybe… that might be a good time to go ahead and get married?” His stomach tightened with nerves waiting for Clint to answer, even though he could feel Clint’s joyful agreement reverberating along their bond and written all over his face in the seconds before he opened his mouth to reply.

“That is a _fantastic_ idea,” Clint said, leaning down to kiss Phil, very thoroughly. “At the beginning, or the end, you think?”

“Maybe Tuesday the 27th?” Phil suggested. “That way we could be with everyone for Christmas, do final prep on Boxing Day, and then steal a couple days from the end of the trip for ourselves.”

“I like the way you plan,” Clint told him, slotting himself against Phil’s side, his hand dropping to trace Phil’s soulmark, leaving syrupy warmth in its wake. “December 27th.”

“It’s a nice day—” Phil said, then stopped himself.

“For a white wedding,” Clint finished the quote, curling his lip into a quite credible Billy Idol sneer, which Phil then had to kiss off his face. It was a moral imperative.

“What was that for?” Clint asked, when Phil had finally had to pull back and catch his breath. “I mean, not that I’m complaining, ever, about you kissing me, but that one seemed specific.”

“You get my jokes,” Phil said, his eyes burning with unexpected tears. “You laugh at my jokes. You like my comic collection. You’ve rescued seventeen animals since we met and you paid all their vet bills yourself. You—god, Clint. I love you. You’re perfect.”

Clint squeezed him tight. “I’m not,” he said softly, kissing Phil’s temple. “And neither are you, and that’s why we’re great. We don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect fit.”

They kissed again, kissed and kept kissing, and when they were finally through, Clint nuzzled his head into the hollow of Phil’s shoulder. 

“You know,” he said, “I bet we could get David Hasselhoff to sing at the wedding. Since he brought us together, and all.”

Phil hit him with a pillow, and it escalated from there. 

Once they managed to turn off the fire alarm and calm down the dog, Phil looked around at the chaos and felt like he would float away with joy. He and Clint _were_ a perfect fit, at home and at work and in bed and everywhere. His life was a lot more chaotic and unusual now than it had been before, but Phil found that he actually liked it that way.

Clint reached over and picked a feather out of Phil’s hair, smiling tenderly at him, and Phil reached out and twined their fingers together, the way he had on the cruise ship over a year before.

“Eŝe čego ne hvatalo,” he said.

“Yeah,” Clint told him, squeezing his hand, and looking over at him with a face shining with love. “Yeah, I love you too.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt "soulmates and Clint getting recruited to SHIELD."
> 
> PS - Did you guys spot the stealth Basil? I had to make him sneaky for anonymity reasons, but Uncle Vitya - Viktor Basilovich Petrov - is in fact another incarnation of one of our favorite OCs.


End file.
